


Not If It's You

by estas_absentis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Authors Politics are Blatantly Obvious, Courtroom Drama, Emotional Sex, Getting Back Together, Healing, Legal Reform, Lie Low at Lupins: 1985 Edition, M/M, Oral Sex, POV Remus Lupin, Raising Harry Potter, Recovery, Remus Lupin Lives, Sirius Black Lives, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 17:55:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18899707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estas_absentis/pseuds/estas_absentis
Summary: In 1985, Remus Lupin is getting by, raising Harry, and trying not to think about the past. When Sirius gets a new trial, that past becomes impossible to ignore.[Wolfstar Big Bang 2019 fic]





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chiru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiru/gifts).



> Can't believe I got this done in time!
> 
> Huge thanks to [Chiru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiru/pseuds/Chiru)/[Nadir](https://nadirising.tumblr.com/) for their wonderful art, without which I would never have arrived at this story. This has been my first Big Bang and it's been so nice working in response to your artwork.
> 
> Also big thank you to my pal [ao3 user eliopeach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliopeach/pseuds/eliopeach) for general cheerleading/reading this through last week despite being super busy. I appreciate the support v much as you know! 
> 
> Title comes from Anne Carson's translation of Orestes, which makes me weak:
> 
> Pylades: I’ll take care of you  
> Orestes: It’s rotten work  
> Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.

**March 1985**

 

The darkened room slowly fades into Remus’ bleary vision, his eyes feeling itchy and hot as he blinks them open. His head aches warningly as he moves it on the pillow, the feathers beneath the slip-case needling his cheek as he shifts. The window by the bed is open a crack and the drawn blinds click periodically with passing cars, their headlights casting warped shadows around the walls before they disappear and leave the room darker in their wake. The muggle alarm clock on the nightstand reads  _ 03:00 _ and Remus winces. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

 

There’s a man beside him, curved towards the opposite wall like a closing bracket. His head is shaved close and there’s a silver ring through one ear, for which Remus now has a corresponding half-moon burn scab on his index finger - he’d brushed it when they’d kissed, unthinking, blisters bursting forth on contact. He’s lucky the man’s a muggle, didn’t make the obvious association, happy enough to accept a garbled excuse about  _ sensitive skin _ and  _ allergies _ . Careful now not to wake him, Remus eases his legs off of the bed and plants one foot and then the other on the cold laminate flooring, his movements slow-motion with the effort of keeping quiet. 

 

He’s pulling on his socks, perched at the very edge of the bed, when he feels the man moving behind him, pulling himself up to a sitting position. When Remus turns to look, the man’s watching him, covers pooled around his hips and a weary smile on his face. He’s really very good looking, all tattoos and ribs, and Remus takes the offered cigarette when he grabs a battered carton from the bedside table and holds it out without a word, the mattress dipping as he leans forward to light it. 

 

“Who is he, then?” he asks, his scouse accent jaggedly musical, each word undulating jarringly with unfamiliar emphasis. Remus, of course, had liked this best about him - how absolutely  _ not _ home counties he’d sounded, how alien his name had rung in the other man’s mouth. 

 

“What?” 

 

“Whoever you were thinking about just then”. The man smiles wryly at Remus, a kind of  _ what can you do _ commiseration. 

 

“Oh. Erm, nobody. Someone… gone. It doesn’t matter”

 

The man just smiles, the rotating light of a passing lorry circling the room and momentarily picking out his high cheekbones, his neat fingernails, the hoop in his earlobe. 

 

“Me too, mate” he says, sounding sad, leaning forward to rest his free hand briefly on Remus’ shoulder, “We make do, though, don’t we?”

 

***

By the time he’s scraping himself awake again, alone and in his own bed, it’s gone noon. He’s so rarely here, in the house, without the distraction of the moon or Harry’s little-boy chatter, that he feels at a loose end, all the rooms too empty, the quiet an intrusive and pressing thing. His mouth feels fuzzy, his body overwarm with the remainder of his hangover, and he cleans up in the bathroom, avoiding his own eyes as he brushes and spits, thinking of last night, the recursive wash of shame he’s felt every time he’s picked up a stranger over the last few years. Not that there have been so very many of them - a few times per year, perhaps, Harry will be sleeping over with his friends and the moon will not be full, and Remus will get blackout drunk rather than sit around in their empty cottage in his empty body, go find someone temporarily to fill it.

 

He always goes for muggles, had realised pretty early on that his scarring was easier to explain with them, easier still when he picks the ones who won’t pretend to care about him at all. Always, as well, very deliberately not like  _ him _ \- no cut-glass accents or long, dark hair: Remus doesn’t grant himself the luxury of pretending. This, like the full moon, is a release, the gnarled and wounding thing that allows Remus to get up every day and wrestle a small boy into sweaters, to agonise over utility bills and chat to other parents about the weather as if there isn’t something irreparably broken at his core. Sometimes it’s the only time he remembers that he’s actually  _ young _ , that his body is for something other than household chores and tearing itself apart, and sometimes that remembering is helpful. Sometimes, like today, it makes him feel hollow and lonely, ashamed of the sad pantomime of intimacy he’s forced to survive upon like table scraps, this thing that looks so much like love but feels so different from it. 

 

When he thinks about before - he  _ doesn’t _ think about before. He’s spent years training himself out of that, unlearning his prelapsarian vision of Life Before The War, reminding himself that there was no volta, no specific point anything could have been saved: possibly nothing he’d have wanted to save was real at all to start with. The first few months, before he’d had Harry, he’d allowed himself to revel in it, thought of little else. That had been the age of kissing boys who looked like Sirius in dodgy pubs, of getting blind drunk because there was nobody to stop him, of buying muggle drugs behind laundrettes and sleeping on trains and knowing, absolutely  _ knowing _ , that at twenty-one he had already seen the best of it, had used up his share of happiness in crowded dormitories and secret passageways, spent it all at once and left himself hollow. 

 

When Albus had turned up to Remus’ parents place in 1982, the house had still been falling apart: he’d not been able to stomach selling, after they’d both gone, and it had stood empty all the years Remus had lived in London with  _ him _ . Consequently there’d been a smell of damp and a general dusty sense of sadness about the whole place, and Remus was rarely in a fit state in those days to do anything about it: generally he’d taken to just passing out on the old couch when whoever he’d dragged home with him had made their excuses and left. Waking to the old man’s insistent knocking at the front door, Remus had relaxed the wards from his prone position, head swimming and body aching. There was a graze on his knee and rather than look up at Dumbledore he’d concentrated on picking the small shards of gravel embedded there out with the ends of his fingernails.

 

A pointed cough had invited Remus to raise his stinging eyes to the headmasters’ blue ones. As a child he’d always found that gaze intimidating, had never been able to meet it for long: he’d been interested then to realise that, having lost everything, he no longer felt any fear at all. 

 

“Mr Lupin” his voice had been reproachful but not ungentle, and Remus had felt his hackles raise at the implication of pity there. Forcing himself to sit, he’d asked in the most neutral voice he could manage, “What could you possibly want from me now.”

 

“You haven’t been at our meetings - we did send an owl.  _ Several _ owls”.

 

“Did you” Remus said, maliciously pleased by how bored his voice sounded. In fact he had received a great deal of owl post in the six months since the world had emptied itself out: to date, everything had gone the way of kindling, unopened, the entreaties and demands of others meaning, for the very first time, absolutely nothing to Remus at all. 

 

“ _ Remus _ ” Dumbledore had said, sitting down on the filthy couch and forcing Remus to pull his legs up with a small, wincing pain. One wizened old hand had clapped down on his knee in a way clearly intended to be comforting, although knowing the headmaster as he did, Remus suspected there was an element of intimidation mixed in with it: one gnarled finger pushed some of the gravel further into the reddened skin beneath it and for the first time in their meeting Remus had felt a jolt of apprehension. “Had you opened any of your post, you would be aware that Harry -”

 

“- is he okay?”

 

“- the child is well, Mr Lupin. Concerns, however, have been raised about his welfare by several of the Order members watching him. Concerns about the suitability of his guardians”.

 

“You mean the concerns I raised in, like,  _ November _ ?”

 

“The protection of his blood, Remus, was too valuable not to try - and pending anyone in the wizarding world with a legal claim to the boy -” at this Dumbledore had offered a sympathetic smile, as if to commiserate Remus for being less trustworthy than a mass-murdering betrayer in the eyes of his friends “- it was simply the only real option, at that time”.

 

“You know I wanted to take him. You _ know  _ I could just as easily have been godfather, if  _ he _ hadn’t -” here his voice, embarrassingly, had broken, and he’d rolled himself a cigarette from the pile of paraphernalia on the coffee table by his side to avoid crying. 

 

“Mr Lupin” Dumbledore said “You have not exactly been modelling your suitability to parent a young child, in recent months”. The blue eyes cast about the room, its general unkempt squalor, how like a squat it seemed, Remus an interloper in his own life, as he supposed he had always been, in one way or another. 

 

What followed - the promises, the begging (and that had rankled - his misery, whatever it had deprived him of, had at least given him a false sense of self-sufficiency, a final release from his lifetime of indebtedness) - had somehow convinced Albus of Remus’ seriousness, although in retrospect it had been clear that he’d made up his mind before ever crossing the Lupin threshold. Probably, ever the chess-player, Albus had been pleased to have a solution in which two birds - his rogue werewolf and his parentless child - could be killed with one stone, and merely sought to imbue the dire warnings about Remus’ general self-destructiveness and flippancy with more import than they otherwise might have had. 

 

In any event Remus had readied the house, cleaning through with an almost manic drive, begging and borrowing the small necessities of child-rearing from assorted Order contacts, not in the least Molly, who, having finally given birth to a girl not too long ago, had declared herself done with producing Weasleys and therefore happy to pass on to Remus the stock of high chairs and cribs long passed down from red-haired son to red-haired son - he had been surprised to receive, too, a small collection of books and toys no longer used by Ted and Andromeda’s little girl. These he had been grateful for, as, not having been shared by a fleet of boisterous Weasleys over a period of decades, they were in great condition and certainly better than Remus himself could have afforded to buy. Speaking to Andromeda was something Remus found almost unbearably painful - she looked a lot like  _ him _ around the eyes - but he found Ted’s solidity comforting. 

 

April 1982 had been spent in a flurry of preparation: checking and rechecking the suite of wards he’d placed on the farmhouse, carving sigils into the oak beams on the doorways and ceilings, painting - by hand - Harry’s room a clean cornflower blue, feeling as he did so that he was putting himself back together also, renovating his very self into somebody dependable, creating a life with a space for Harry at the centre. The detritus of the last six months - the muggle address book, the broken bottles rattling guiltily in the skip, the cigarette butts littering the front yard - all were scrubbed away, Remus feeling at once purposeful, grown up and absolutely terrified. 

 

The morning Harry had arrived, he’d been clutched tight against Minerva’s chest as the two apparated just outside the boundary of the farmstead. All the while Remus watched the two approach, panic had risen, uncontrollable, in his chest, a hot bubbling threatening to choke him -  _ I can’t do this after all _ , he’d suddenly wanted to tell her,  _ this is a mistake _ . Pale and sickly-feeling, he’d opened the heavy front door with its engraved protective runes, and Harry had trotted unsteadily into the hallway, free from Minerva’s grasp. Laughing brightly, he’d tugged at the hem of Remus’ battered jeans, his chubby little hands making grasping motions at the ends of both outstretched pudgy arms.

 

“I think he wants you to hold him, Mr Lupin” Minerva had said, affection twisting one corner of her stern mouth into softness, and as he’d done so, feeling condemned, the horror had melted into something else - fear, yes, but a kind of murderous, fierce protectiveness, something enormous and welling. Harry’s cheeks had been pink with the Spring chill and his hair as messy as if they’d flown all the way from Surrey. His dimpled cheeks had creased up with that uninhibited, little-boy smile Remus had remembered from Before, when Harry had been the only point of light in their darkening world, the only purely good thing - and he’d found himself smiling back, beaming at Harry and then at Minerva, amazed that the bombed-out world could still give him something so miraculous to love.

 


	2. Two

“Sugar, love?” Molly asks, her back to him as she bustles about with the tea-kettle.

 

“Thanks, Molly - just the one, milk too - ta” he smiles as she plonks the red mug onto the scarred kitchen table before him and, after eyeing him speculatively for a second, summons the biscuit barrel from the sideboard with a wandless  _ accio _ . She never misses an opportunity to feed him up, and Remus acquiesces to these gestures with a sort of good-natured resignation. 

 

“Harry alright for you last night?” he asks, always a little guilty at how often he relies on the Weasleys’ hospitality, even after three years of full moons to get used to the idea. Idly he flips through yesterday’s  _ Prophet _ , which features on its front page the third in a series of excerpts from a salacious tell-all memoir from a  _ Hobgoblins _ groupie (Today’s offering:  _ “1970-1975: Witches! Witches! Witches! The real reason for that nickname and much, much more!” _ ) and an interview with Elfrida Dickens, the leader of a legal reform group out of Manchester campaigning for changes to the wizarding criminal justice system. Ms Dickens stares out in three-quarter view from her black and white portrait, firm and unsmiling, the shaved half of her head defiantly angled towards the camera. 

 

“He was no trouble at all, Remus, as usual. Ron just adores having him over, you know it’s never a worry, having him here, if you wanted to…” she trails off uncertainly, clearly unsure exactly what Remus might want to do with his spare time “...well, if you ever want to do anything. I know Nora Belby was dropping hints that she’d like to see you away from the school gates some time”. Remus just grimaces at her, he hopes in a way that signals polite disinterest rather than hostility. He knows she means well, but her gentle suggestions and unsubtle hints at possible romantic interests for him - always very charming, very bland young women, usually with toddlers of their own - are quite wearing. He thinks Molly knows he’ll never say yes to any of them, but, like trying to shovel food into him at every opportunity, it’s just something she does: he tries to take it as an expression of care, for him and for Harry, with good grace.

 

Sensing today won’t be the day he finally caves in, Molly moves the conversation on, gesturing to the newspaper with one freckled hand, “Oh, that woman. I know she  _ means well _ -” Molly makes ‘means well’ sound like an irredeemable slight - “but what good can come of dragging all of this up again?”. 

 

Remus sympathises, to an extent. The Campaign for Legal and Prison Reform (CLPR) had started making noise around a year after that terrible night in October, 1981, and at the time Remus had felt nothing but anger. Who cared if the people who had robbed him of almost everything - had robbed Harry of his parents - were treated fairly? One cold, bright day in November, he’d been washing up by hand with the wireless on for company during Harry’s afternoon nap when a segment about the group - then merely a small, grassroots effort - had aired. Angrily he’d considered changing the channel but, up to his elbows in suds and without his wand to hand, he’d listened as Ms Dickens had explained, passionately, a confident sort of anger in her voice, how the DMLE raids, which had begun in earnest after the Potters’ death, had been conducted. 

 

“I mean, you look at the minutes - the paperwork - there’s no regard for process at all. Hardly ever a warrant -” she pronounced this without the ‘t’, making Remus think of small animals, burrowing beneath the earth - “and often no solid evidence of wrongdoing other than hearsay. Then there’s the trials - when there were trials - complete lack of legal representation for the accused, lack of transparency, rush jobs, basically, then straight to Azkaban, which is a whole other heap of human rights abuses in itself - “

 

The interviewer’s RP accent made a sharp contrast to Ms Dickens’ Manchester twang as he cut in: “Surely you’re not suggesting Azkaban in itself should be abolished, Ms Dickens?”. He sounded amused, like he was talking to an idealistic child, someone with unrealistic and silly aims. Her voice, when she replied, was steely and firm: “Prison abolition is not the primary aim of CLPR, but I certainly don’t support a carceral system over rehabilitative justice, and solitary confinement is very clearly defined as a method of torture in our charter, Mr Legg” here Remus heard a smile in her voice “as I’m sure you know, having read it to prepare for this interview”. 

 

He found himself warming to her, to the flustered tone in the interviewer’s voice as he hurriedly agreed that he of course had, “But Miss Dickens -”

 

“ _ Ms _ , thanks”

 

“Right - er - surely you understand why the general public might not be so keen to offer the olive branch to Death Eaters and their associates? Why certain things had to be - streamlined - in order to restore society in the immediate aftermath of October 1981?”

 

“I understand why it happened, Mr Legg, but I hardly think basic human rights are an olive branch - they’re not a gift, we owe them to everyone. Already there are several people I can name off the top of my head” here she listed them “who we’re confident were wrongfully imprisoned, and are actually very likely to receive a full pardon if we can use CLPR funds to secure legal representation and lobby for new trials”. 

 

“So you think some of our imprisoned Death Eaters aren’t really Death Eaters at all?” again, the smugness in his voice struck Remus, but with a note of uncertainty this time.

 

“I think,” she said grimly, “that we didn’t even prove the ones that  _ are  _ Death Eaters guilty, in a legal sense. And that if we want society to be better than they left it, we have to do this. Even if we don’t think they deserve it. Even if that extends as far as your Lestranges, your Carrows, even to Sirius Bl-” here Remus had dived at the little radio, soapy hands slipping on the dials in his haste to turn it off. The idea of that name being spoken aloud inside this house, as Harry slept, seemed profane and shattering, as if it could crumble the walls of the life Remus had spent the last six months building for the two of them here. 

 

He’d tried to put it out of his mind, but in bed later that night, Remus had been sleepless, imagining Sirius as he’d looked in his mugshot, wild and laugh-crying, his handsome face twisted beyond recognition into something cruel and strange and lost. Had he been given one of these cloak-and-dagger, unrecorded trials, or extrajudicially shipped straight to Azkaban, as Ms Dickens said some of the higher-profile accused had been? Was he given Veritaserum to extract a confession, or had the Aurors (as some reports now claimed) used _ Crucio  _ to make him talk? Had he found the whole thing funny, sneered at them as he often did when losing an argument, or had he been (as Remus knew he always was, somewhere deep down) frightened, at the end? He found himself wishing for courtroom documents, minutes detailing his confession, something to pore over and understand. 

 

After that, he’d tried to avoid news of CLPR, although over the years, after a few high-profile pardons and tell-all exposes (the Aurors involved, of course, always just ended up on paid administrative leave) the group became harder to ignore, and the public attitude towards them changed from outright hostility to grudging respect, Ms Dickens moving from annoying upstart to reluctant public figure. Remus couldn’t help liking her, the way she didn’t court respectability with her piercings and her punk hairdo, her no-nonsense accent unsoftened by media training, the way she talked about  _ right  _ and  _ wrong _ like those concepts still had inalienable meaning. 

 

“Mmm.” he said now, noncommittally to Molly, who, having lost her two brothers to Death Eaters was still not ready to sympathise with the accused “I know what you mean. Who are they going after this time, then? Must be someone big to get the front page”. He flipped the newspaper out, so it lay unfolded before him, allowing him to see for the first time the lede below the headline in unmistakable, clear newsprint:

 

**Latest CLPR Campaign Shocks Ministers**

 

_ In their highest profile case to date, the Campaign for Legal and Prison Reform, led by Elfrida Dickens (above), have set their sights on possibly the most notorious incarcerated Death Eater of all: Sirius Black. It was Mr Black’s betrayal of the Potter family, and their subsequent murders, that ushered in the end of He Who Must Not Be Named in October 1981. Now Ms. Dickens says Black must be given the trial he never had four years ago.  _

 

_ “We’ve always wanted to look at this case” Dickens told the Prophet on Monday, “but as you can imagine, being the first - the catalyst, really - gaining access to prisoner information on this one has been a long, arduous process. We simply didn’t have the resources until now to attempt it, and we’ve met with a lot of resistance alone the way.  _

 

_ But I can promise you this: innocent or guilty, Sirius Black is finally going to face real justice”. _

 

The world lurches beneath Remus and he is embarrassingly, blessedly grateful to be sitting down. He must look terrible, because Molly is rubbing his back in slow, soothing circles, the way she’d do for one of the boys if they were feeling poorly, and he finds himself leaning towards her, like he’s another one of her kids and not a 24 year old man with a child of his own to care for. Horribly, he realises that he is crying for the first time in years, and having realised this can’t make himself stop, great, wracking, snotty sobs that he hopes can’t be heard from the garden, where Arthur is playing with the boys in the early-afternoon sun.

 

“Don’t tell Harry” he whispers to Molly, and he doesn’t know what he’s referring to - his own moment of weakness, for which he is already soundly ashamed, or the larger horror, the fact that their lives now will be full of Sirius, on the radio, in the papers, in snatches of conversation in wizarding pubs and on the street. It’s unthinkable, unfair - for both of them, he thinks, having to face this every day. What on earth is he going to do?


	3. Three

“Harry love, come and pick your favourite books - I’ll grab the one about the tiger, okay?” Remus calls from the living room, wedging a couple of the clunky, card-bound volumes into his duffel bag. He knows he has to be sparing, even with the extension charm, but the last thing he wants is to be cooped up in muggle Brittany with a bored four year old and nothing but French-language TV for company.

 

He’s feeling rattled, having to concentrate to stop his hands getting clumsy with the buzz of anxiety in his veins. They’re not running away, exactly - Remus isn’t foolish enough to think there’s anywhere Albus couldn’t find them if he had to - but he’s not keen to hang around either. This morning’s meeting with the Headmaster hadn’t gone well, and Remus knows he’s on borrowed time - wants to be safely out of the country and out of the Ministry’s reach before the inevitable happens.

 

**

 

“Mr Lupin” he had said, his voice measured and lilting, the way you’d talk to a child - the way he’d talked to  _ Remus _ as a child - “I’m aware that this must be  _ challenging _ for you - but I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done. I feel, as strongly as you do, that the most that will be gained by this process is pain for those involved, but the law is, sadly, absolute. What has been set in motion must now be obeyed”. 

 

_ Those involved. _ As if there was anyone else alive save Remus and Harry that would be hurt by Sirius’ sudden omnipresence, as if this were a burden that could be in any way shared or appreciated - Remus had burned with anger at that, the old impersonal reassurance, the suggestion that the old man of course knew best, that feeling anything other than a sense of duty to some higher good was to be profoundly, childishly, selfish. He’d made the trip up to Hogwarts hoping vainly that Dumbledore - who, at the time, had been so strident in his insistence that Remus accept the fact of Sirius’ guilt - might be able to help in some way: not to derail the campaign (Remus, at least in theory, agreed that finally having incontrovertible proof of Sirius’ treachery might provide some sense of emotional closure) but at least to protect the two of them from the worst of it, to use his influence to keep Harry out of the papers, and, most crucially, to protect Remus from having to testify in the inevitable court case. 

 

Things had moved very quickly since March, when the first rumblings of CLPR’s advocacy on Sirius’ behalf had begun. April had brought along with it a steady stream of  _ Prophet  _ articles and interviews with Ms Dickens, outlining the numerous instances of misconduct from November 1981 and urging the public to get behind this latest - and hardest to sell - push for justice. The public mood towards Sirius had always been one of revulsion - the Death Eater who orphaned Harry Potter, betrayed his closest friends and murdered many innocents in the immediate aftermath. His name was synonymous with that particular period of history, the first in what became a long line of highly-publicised convictions, and paradoxically the man who had, with his betrayal, hastened the end of the war itself.

 

Initially the  _ Prophet  _ had gone with a series of articles recapping the events of autumn 1981 itself - interviews with eyewitnesses to the emergency response, lurid rehashings of the crime scenes, both Godric’s Hollow and the muggle high street on which Sirius’ most public crime - and unhinged, laughing arrest - had occurred. The full-page mugshots and artists’ impressions. The nightmares, which had somewhat abated in recent years, had worsened then: sometimes Remus was standing in James and Lily’s cottage, but rather than bricks and mortar it was made from the ink and paper of the drawings from the newspaper. Unable to intervene he’d watch as a man - sometimes Voldemort, sometimes Sirius himself - stepped through the blueprint-house, James’ body laying limp in the entryway ( _ Fig. A  _ in the  _ Prophet _ sketch), his blood startlingly red and real in contrast. He’d watch as Lily, too, fell - shouting, as an unnamed neighbour had described, for Harry to be spared - and then Harry would cry and cry and Remus would wake with a jolt and run, panic seizing his chest, to Harry’s room, where he slept, safe and oblivious. 

 

Those dreams, terrible though they were, somehow were not as bad as the others: the ones where Sirius was smiling and young, his hands (the things they had done!) on Remus, treacherous memories of their time together.  _ Did you ever love me? _ Remus would think, and sometimes he would shout at Sirius but more often he would lean in to the warmth of his arms and forget momentarily. In these dreams when they parted, when he moved his gaze back to Sirius’ face, it would have shifted, morphed into the maniacally laughing man from the mugshot, his eyes wild and haunted, and Remus would become aware, gradually, that Sirius’ hands were slippery with blood, sticky and iron-smelling where they held Remus’ face close. Remus would try to back away but Sirius’ bloody hands would grip tighter, his nails digging half-moons into his cheeks, and Sirius would kiss him, no affection in it, a display of force, a marking:  _ you will never, _ he seemed to be telling Remus,  _ be free of me _ .

 

Day by day he grew more exhausted, curling back to sleep in the armchair after dropping Harry at school, dreading the moment reporters tried to seek him out for comment. After they’d exhausted October 1981, the _ Prophet _ had moved on to covering Sirius’ childhood, his schooldays, in forensic detail - his Black upbringing, his dead Death Eater brother, the inevitability of his darkness, seeds planted in earliest childhood. How foolish the world had been to trust him! There were interviews with Hogwarts alumni - those who remembered the Marauder’s crueller escapades and now had come to see them as an indication of Sirius’ future criminality, as if James (in whom they were a sign of youthful verve) had not been the instigator at least half of the time. One Ravenclaw boy (name withheld) claimed Sirius, drunk in sixth year, had tried to kiss him after a Quidditch match, and this too seemed to add to a larger impression of Sirius as a man with (although the reporter was careful not to outright state this) all manner of dark and hidden impulses. 

 

Remus’ name came up, but only as an aside - by remaining alive, he’d made himself less interesting than tragic James and martyred Peter. He pored over the articles that did mention him in a state of panic, terrified that one day there would be someone from their brief bubble of post-Hogwarts happiness who would remember seeing something - a hand lingering in the small of a back, a brush of lips, a moment of carelessness at the end of a night out - and the press would be on him. He lay awake at night trying to remember who had taken photographs at parties, who had received Christmas cards signed with two names - evidence of Remus’ fatal lack of judgement, the things he was able to overlook in order to be loved. 

 

Then, one day last week, Remus had opened the paper to see two photographs of Sirius - not selected from the usual pile the  _ Prophet _ regularly reused (Remus could describe each one from memory), but guttingly, joltingly new. In the smaller of the two, Sirius’ face was turned almost completed away from the camera, angled towards an intent-looking Elfrida Dickens, dark curtain of hair falling over his eyes, as if it had come untucked from behind his ear just as the shutter clicked. It shone greasily as it moved under the harsh lighting overhead, longer than it had been even in the seventies, obscuring most of Sirius’ jawline and neck, the ragged ends resting in the sickly-deep dip of his clavicles and looking as if they’d been sawed at carelessly with something blunt, a far cry from Remus’ careful barbering in the kitchen of their flat years ago. 

 

He’d always been so nervous to cut it, not wanting to ruin Sirius’ beautiful hair, which Remus had loved and about which Sirius had always tried to pretend not to be too precious. Had he - had anyone - tried to run their fingers through it now, as he had done then, they would have caught on all manner of knots and snarls, tangled in the patches of unkempt matting that reminded Remus of a neglected animal. Sirius’ prison robes hung limply from his frame, and although only his torso was visible in this photograph, Remus could tell he had become extremely thin in Azkaban, his shoulders seeming very narrow where Remus remembered them broad - remembered the feeling of the muscles in them shifting beneath his fingers, the miracle of his working flesh, all the moving parts of Sirius that had corresponded to form something almost unbelievably, maddeningly wonderful ( _ of course, this is how he got you _ , Remus had thought, annoyed at the ache of nostalgia in his gut even and especially now). 

 

In the larger photograph, Sirius sat alone, looking into the camera, holding the viewer’s gaze for a long moment before casting his eyes downwards. It was masterfully done, and clearly at Ms Dickens’ direction - he could almost hear her describing what she wanted, something honest and humanising. It couldn’t have been further from the mugshot, the last and most memorable image most of wizarding society had of him. His hands were clasped loosely in his lap, the nails rimmed dark and bitten bloody, and the knobby bones of his wrists protruded frighteningly where they emerged from his tattered prison robes. Everything about him seemed small, not simply his near-skeletal slimness but his posture as well, shoulders bowed and legs pressed tightly together, as if he was trying to shrink into himself. His skin was so pale he looked half-dead, a colour somewhere between grey and yellow, save for beneath his eyes, where the skin was a mottled mauveish colour, deep grooves worn there as if he hadn’t slept properly in years. His eyelashes and brows seemed especially dark against his sallow skin, and his lips were pale and cracked. 

 

All of this had been terrible to see, but the look in his eyes had been the worst of it: all of the madness of the mugshot had burned away, left something sad and starved behind. Sirius’ eyes had never looked like that, in all the years Remus had known him - always they had been bright with his laughter or anger or sadness, his complete inability to suppress his emotions, his almost selfish refusal to be still. Looking into them, Remus had felt something emptying in his chest, a yearning pain, as if the photograph were a vacuum pulling something in him away. Horribly he had for a moment ached to take the Sirius in the photograph into his arms, to warm his bird-bones, to envelop him and make him safe, and he’d stared at the picture for what felt like hours as, on a loop, Sirius averted his gaze, staring down into his own lap with a deference and a nervousness that Remus had never before seen.  _ Look at me _ , he remembered saying, close to the end, trying desperately to convince Sirius to trust him (ha!),  _ just fucking look into my eyes, and you’ll know _ . Now he had looked, and looked, and over and over again Sirius had turned from him, looked away.

 

**

 

Remus clatters through the house one last time, making sure the muggle electrics are off at the wall and the wards are holding fast. In the sitting room, Harry is happily sitting and flipping through a picture book, half-mouthing words he is remembering more than reading to himself as he waits. Remus looks at himself in the bathroom mirror as he empties the bin under the sink - he looks knackered, and harried, and entirely as he expected he would. 

 

“Remus!” comes Harry’s voice

 

“Yep - coming - just a sec, Harry!” he calls back, needing just a minute alone before he has to plaster his parent-smile back on and pretend this is just a spur-of-the-moment holiday, something pleasant and exciting for them to share, rather than what it really is: at best, a way to protect Harry from the constant stream of Sirius-coverage, from the inevitable press intrusion into his life, at worst, Remus’ own cowardly escape from the prospect of seeing Sirius again, of having to give statements or gain even one more reason to sleep unsoundly on the man’s behalf. 

 

“ _ Remus _ ” he repeats, insistent, “Come on! Owl!”

 

Remus smiles, exasperated and fond. Harry’s favourite book is about a naughty owl who nobody at the shop wants to buy, who plays tricks on various Diagon Alley shoppers. He does the voices and everything, even though it had always been Sirius who’d done them best when they’d had him as a baby, something in Remus always a bit too afraid to look silly, even in front of an infant. He re-enters the living room, prepared to race through the owl book in record time before they depart - on a muggle National Express, no less - when he sees the grey, speckled bird tapping insistently at the window.

 

“Owl!” Harry repeats, accusingly, gesturing at it. Remus’ heart sinks. Tied to its leg is an envelope bearing an unmistakable black seal - official Ministry correspondence. He turns on his heel - maybe there’s still time to avoid the summons, if they take the back door and jog to the bus stop  _ right fucking now _ \- he’ll have to carry Harry but he thinks he can manage that for the short sprint down the road, and… 

 

The bird takes flight, suddenly, clearly tired of being ignored at the window. “Come on, Harry” Remus urges, grabbing the duffle bag and scrambling for his keys with his free hand, hands shaking with the need to rush, as overhead there’s a scratching noise, a scraping sound and then a gentle displacement of coal dust as the letter drifts down from the chimney into the messy hearth. It immediately wriggles, obviously charmed to deliver itself to the addressee, and then, in one long, graceful arc, hurls itself from the fireplace towards Remus, who catches it out of traitorous instinct. Reacting to his touch, the note opens itself, reading aloud in a plummy, pompous sort of voice:

 

_ To: Remus John Lupin _

 

_ Mr Lupin, _

 

_ You are required by law to testify before the Wizengamot in the civil trial of Mr Sirius Orion Black. Your presence is required three weeks from today, on 15th May 1985. Please be assured your testimony is required only as evidence. Failure to present yourself before the Wizengamot, once summoned, is a prosecutable offence under Wizarding law and as such, you will be subject to the trace until you are no longer needed in this matter. _

 

_ For legal advice or clarification, please send owl post to the address overleaf. An advocate will be in touch in due course with further details of what to expect from your court date. _

 

_ Yours, _

 

_ Winifred Hanlan _

_ Senior Administrative Assistant _

_ Ministry of Magic _


	4. Four

Remus sits in his cramped hotel room, thumbing through one of the tatty paperbacks left on the shelf by previous guests. His bag sits, still packed, on the overstuffed armchair by the dressing table, papers poking out haphazardly where he’s ruffled through the contents to grab his toothbrush and the t-shirt he sleeps in. He had, rather optimistically, brought along the manuscript he’s proofing at the moment to work on in his free time; he’d thought he’d need the distraction, especially stuck here, away from home. 

 

Recusing witnesses, particularly ‘vulnerable parties’ for the duration of their stint in court, has never been standard Ministry protocol, but the counsel had explained to him how the increased publicity in this particular case warranted additional safeguarding, and how given the sensitivity of the matters at hand, no risk could be taken with regards to witnesses being threatened, polyjuiced or otherwise simply absconding - on this final point he cannot fault them, given the summons only found him as he was attempting to make a run for it himself. 

 

Harry has been left safely with the Weasleys, a Ministry security officer stationed at the Burrow in a way Remus hopes is not too obvious. He’ll be happy enough with Ron, is accustomed enough to his monthly sleepovers there not to question one extra stay away from home. Guilt aches in his chest, as it always does when he thinks of how often he has to be away from Harry, that old nagging worry that he isn’t - that he isn’t capable of - doing it right. 

  
  


**

 

After he’d left Harry with Molly, the pair of them waving to him from the early morning window, Remus had travelled in to the Ministry with Arthur, who’d seemed very apologetic not to be able to accompany him down to the courtrooms. Awkwardly he’d clapped Remus on the upper arm in parting, telling  him “You’ll be alright, lad” in a firm and slightly embarrassed voice, as if he’d been a frightened Weasley boy headed to a medical appointment.

 

When the lift doors had opened, the dark tiles reflecting his own worried face back to him, Remus had followed the directions on his letter down a nondescript corridor culminating in a heavy oak door bearing the legend  _ Meeting Room B  _ in curling gold script, overly ostentatious like every other decorative choice down here. Everything about the Ministry - from the makeup of its senior strata to the dark, fussy architecture - screamed purebloodedness, even despite the current fashion for declaring oneself ‘post-purity’. Pushing open the door, Remus had been surprised to see the familiar form of Elfrida Dickens, standing up from her chair to greet him. He’d noticed her working the silver rings off of her right hand as she’d crossed the room, offering her now bare fingers for him to shake. He had done, in a daze, and subsequently sank into the offered seat beside her feeling sort of floaty and distant from himself, the environment and company so unfamiliar and unreal-feeling as to be like one of his dreams. 

 

“Mr Lupin” she’d said, warmly, and smiled in a very gentle way, as one would look at a person emerging from a dead faint. It was a hospital bedside smile, a sorry-you’re-suffering smile, and Remus had resented it slightly, how obvious his anxiety must have been to warrant it. 

 

“I didn’t expect  _ you _ ” Remus had told her, and immediately worried that it had sounded rude. Elfrida - as she’d asked him to refer to her - had just smiled, though, and told him that while she wasn’t his legal counsel, she’d wanted to see him before the trial really got underway and talk about a few things privately. 

 

“For example -” she pronounced it ‘ _ fer _ ’ “- they’ve been given clearance to use Veritaserum in this trial, so you’ll be required to give your statement under its influence. I just wanted to talk to you about that - I’m not in favour of non consenting subjects being dosed with truth potions, but the gravity of Sirius’ charges” (just hearing his name slip so casually had made Remus’ stomach lurch nauseously) “sadly require it, in a legal sense. Another campaign for another time, maybe”. 

 

“Right.” he’d said, tightly. He’d been expecting Veritaserum anyway - it had been used in every retrial so far in which murder had been a charge - and knew his rights as such. 

 

“So, Remus - can I call you Remus?” she’d asked, and when he’d nodded his assent, continued, “I just wanted to talk to you and see if there was anything you wanted to ask me, or if you wanted me to come and act as a witness to your statement-giving, which  _ is _ something you’re entitled to, although I don’t trust the Aurors as far as I can throw ‘em in terms of remembering to tell you that”. There was something amusingly teenage about her exasperation, the way she talked about the police like incompetent but malignant prefects, and Remus could see how her compassionate brashness had gotten CLPR so far in so few years. 

 

He’d been surprised to find himself accepting her offer. Witnesses under Veritaserum gave their statements in secure interview rooms away from the main courtroom in the company of an Auror and a Ministry secretary - these statements were then the basis of their cross-examination in the courtroom. Only the accused ever had to testify under Veritaserum in person, and it wasn’t a fate Remus envied, the gut-churning vulnerability, the inability to think around or evade, in front of all of those eyes… 

 

“So I suppose” she’d continued, “I wanted to ask if there was anything you want to talk about before that, anything you’re worried about - or about the impact of this whole thing on you more generally, because it must be hard, it all coming round again”. 

 

Remus had wanted to spill it all - his fear that people would judge him for what was now his darkest secret - it superseded even the lycanthropy - that he had loved Sirius and still not been able to see him. Worse to want a monster than simply to be one, because at least in that he had had no choice, and had paid and paid, in folk cures and lost jobs, in five years of having to say goodbye to Harry when he most wanted to keep him close. But not talking about his feelings had become habit, and he found he did not now know how to break it - it had been as if a sheet of ice stoppered his throat and could not be thawed, would not permit the words to break through and dissolve into his dry mouth. So instead he had asked, surprising himself, “How is  _ he _ ?”.

 

Elfrida, to her credit, did not ask who Remus meant, and if she’d been startled, she did not allow herself to show it much. Frowning slightly, but not unkindly, she’d said “As well as can be expected. Azkaban is… it’s not an easy place. Ideally he would have had some time away before the trial, but my requests were unsuccessful. And he’s been very nervous about hearing from, well, hearing from you, actually…” she trailed off, looking at him with an indiscernible expression. 

 

Did Elfrida  _ like  _ Sirius? It was hard to imagine the skinny, sad looking version of him from the photographs having Sirius’ old charm, almost impossible to picture his newly gaunt features stretched around his smile, the dazzling one, all big, white teeth, the lone dimple of his left cheek winking into existence like punctuation. The amount of times Sirius had used that smile to get his own way, to twist even the most humourless disciplinarian around his little finger…

 

Or maybe it was pity. Surely it was was easy to feel sorry for someone who looked so small and wounded, no matter what they’d done - Remus had, after all, hadn’t he? He’d wanted to help, seeing Sirius so faded, and hated himself for it. Sudden anger had flared in the pit of his belly at this line of thought, and he’d found himself saying, almost without thinking, his voice almost unbearably bitter to his own ears “Good. He deserves to be _ nervous _ , don’t you think?”.

 

The question was rhetorical, but she had still seemed to consider it. Very carefully, as if tiptoeing through a warded field, she’d answered him, “Mr Lupin, I can’t imagine how hard this must have been for you -”

 

“You really can’t.”

 

“- but Remus,” here her voice had been soft, a tone in it that Remus recognised from his late nights whispering Harry back to sleep when bad dreams or growing pains or teeth coming in woke him, “I know you’re viewing this trial as a mere formality, a way to incontrovertibly prove Sirius’ guilt, but I think for your own...sanity, I suppose, you need to consider at least the possibility that the opposite may well be the case”.

 

He’d narrowed his eyes against the fear-sick stirring in his belly. “What do you know?” he’d asked, amazed by how level his voice had sounded.

 

“Sirius has been reluctant, or unable, to talk very much about it other than the obvious. But under Veritaserum we truly have no idea what will come to light - there have been some very surprising developments in other cases, Remus, and you just need to be prepared for that. I know it’s hard. I really do.” 

 

They’d passed the rest of their meeting talking about easier things - Elfrida was interested in Harry, and Remus always found him easy to talk about, his little habits and interests, how funny he was, his pride and amazement that he’d managed to get the babbling toddler who’d come to him barely older than a baby to something more closely resembling a small adult - someone with his own personality, who could talk to Remus and read (albeit slowly), who loved animals and was already a little terror when he and Ron borrowed Fred and George’s half-size brooms at the Burrow. 

 

By the time a knock at the door had signalled the arrival of his legal advisor - a youngish clerk called Rex with neat black hair and a pocket square that matched his incongruously old-fashioned waistcoat - he’d felt almost relaxed, and Elfrida had remained in the room as Rex had run through the itinerary for the next few days: statement taking and swearing in today, and then courtroom tomorrow, running on for as long as his testimony was needed. Rex had been hopeful they wouldn’t need to keep Remus for more than the first day, as a simple character witness, and even as Remus had signed the little slip of parchment declaring that his rights and responsibilities had been explained and understood, Rex had been standing to leave, an apologetic look on his face as he’d done so. 

 

“Ms Dickens, I have appointments this afternoon,” he’d said, his hand on the ornate handle, “as you’re sitting in on the statement-taking, can I ask you to direct Remus to the chambers?”. It hadn’t really sounded like a question, but she’d agreed anyway, Rex flashing a quick, harried smile as he’d headed back out into the maze like corridors of the Ministry, already muttering something under his breath to himself as he faded from view.

 

“Somewhere better to be?” Remus had asked, and Elfrida had grinned at him. “Junior clerks have to take turns filling these pro bono shifts for the Ministry on top of their normal caseload. Our Rex probably has some stuffy old barrister breathing down his neck back at base, waiting for his coffee fetching. Speaking of, you should really have some lunch before we go down to the statement-taker’s chamber - want me to walk you to the canteen?” 

 

Remus would have liked to go for lunch alone, to collect his thoughts before the dreaded truth-telling, but he’d been keenly aware that even in the unlikely event of successfully finding the canteen, he’d probably never manage to get back, and so he’d followed Elfrida down a succession of what seemed to be identical tiled hallways, trying to match her purposeful stride, the scuffed leather of her ancient-looking bike boots pleasingly at odds with the sleek expensiveness of their surroundings. 

 

He’d been able to do little more than pick at a pre-packaged sandwich over lunch, nauseous with anxiety, and Elfrida had winced empathetically over at him, seeing him pushing shreds of side-salad around the half-full plate, companionably leaning over to steal crisps from his abandoned packet. After lunch she’d bobbed out through a side door into a blustery courtyard - home to two malnourished miniature trees and a series of colour-coded food waste bins. Here they’d each rolled a cigarette from the little tobacco tin she’d had secreted somewhere about her person (Remus didn’t think it polite to ask where she’d been hiding it) and smoked in friendly silence, broken only by Elfrida saying, once “It’s fine to be nervous, you know. Anyone would be”, to which there was no good answer, and so Remus had simply nodded, and not given one. 

 

The statement-taker’s room had been the same dark wood and darker tile aesthetic of the rest of the Ministry, a four-seater table at the centre like a police interview room on a Muggle crime drama. Across from Remus (Elfrida sat beside him) were two men. The first, Giles Lloyd-Greene, was a robust-looking wizard in a burgundy silk turban, who introduced himself as statement-taker in a smooth, cultured voice not unlike a 1940s radio broadcaster. Ambrose Fischer, a Ministry secretary, sat beside him at a typewriter, his tightly curling hair a sandy shade and his skin so pale as to be transparent, like a baby fish with all its organs exposed. Both of them belonged in these surroundings, something refined and easy about them, in a way that Remus, in his patched sweater and Elfrida, with her giant boots and the abundance of rings in her ears, simply did not. Their shared incongruity heartened Remus, made him feel like part of a team, reminded him that - however he felt about proceedings - he was not the one on trial. 

 

After another explanation of the process, Mr Lloyd-Greene produced a small, ornate bottle from the top pocket of his robes and set it on the table.

 

“If you would be so kind, Mr Lupin, when you’re ready”

 

Remus had eyed the bottle warily, sweat prickling the nape of his neck. Was this some kind of test? 

 

Beside him Elfrida had huffed out an enormous, thoroughly fed up sigh and rolled her eyes almost audibly. In response to questioning (and somewhat disgruntled) looks from the two Ministry employees, she’d spoken, as if talking to small children “It’s bloody silver, isn’t it? Remus is a werewolf, as I’m sure you’re aware having  _ checked his paperwork,  _ so I would suggest you find something else to distill that potion into”. 

 

Remus had laughed into his hand at Elfrida’s sheer gobbiness, then tried to pass it off as a cough. Not a test, just the Ministry’s eternal lack of thought. 

 

The potion had been transferred without ceremony to a ridged plastic cup from the water cooler - somehow this had made it less intimidating - and Remus had taken a deep breath. He’d thought about everything he kept buried within himself, all the treasured and reviled secrets that had festered or otherwise gathered dust inside of him, and of all the dead who also kept them. He’d thought of Harry, and hoped that by the time he was old enough to find the trial transcripts, he would understand that Remus loved him very much, and regretted his mistakes so enormously that waking in itself each day was a kind of penance. He’d thought of Sirius, of how badly wrong one person can be about another, and of how this new pain was a trade-off, a ritual embarrassment for which he would be rewarded, at last, with certainty, an ending. 

 

The potion had been bitter and yet barely-there: it had felt more like air than liquid, flowing into him. Feeling at once light-headed and curiously heavy, Remus had nodded over to the Ministry staff before him to start the statement taking, the short, blunt nails of Elfrida’s left hand digging into the skin above his elbow in support, as if anchoring him to himself even as his tongue came loose, ceased to be his own thing. 


	5. Five

The courtroom is as imposingly dark as everywhere else in the Ministry: the seat Remus waits on is uncomfortable, probably deliberately so. Beside him, Rex is tapping agitatedly at the dragonhide briefcase on his lap with one index finger - when Remus meets his eye, he smiles tightly at him in a way clearly intended to be reassuring. 

 

“Not long now - try to relax. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll have this over with” he says. 

 

Remus has never felt less relaxed in his life. The burnt hotel coffee - all he’d managed to stomach this morning - threatens a reappearance, stomach roiling dangerously with anxiety. Whenever he tries to picture actually seeing Sirius, it feels unreal, like another dream, something he’d never (save murderous, vengeful fantasies) imagined would happen again. It seems impossible that this ghost, this artefact from Remus’ worst and most treasured memories, can be alive and present in 1985, in this new world in which he is an adult, in which he is alone.

 

He’d fallen asleep early the night previous, awoken dry-mouthed and sweating coldly on top of the covers, vague recollections of the usual nightmares fading back into his mind as sleep receded. The details escaped him, but as it often did, the feeling remained: the cold spike of dread, the general sensation of having done something unnamed and terrible, a nonspecific guilt and apprehension that still hangs over him here in the depths of the Ministry, the small octagonal courtroom in which a handful of strangers will pore over his past. Remus isn’t an idiot - he knows that, despite the small size of the audience, the  _ Prophet  _ are covering the case. After today, everything will change for him - everyone will know. Remus Lupin, twice cursed - an animal who loved an animal, Dark in the end just as everyone (he imagines) has always, somewhere, suspected. 

 

In the bench opposite sits Elfrida, who gives Remus a small wave and a sympathetic grimace when she catches his eye. A tall witch Remus doesn’t recognise sits beside her, long locs of hair piled up on top of her head. A ring glints on her lower lip, the bright, curving silver hoop shining like a waning moon against her dark skin. The judge to their right is not someone Remus has met before - an older wizard with a neatly cropped chin-length beard and dark Ministry robes. Elfrida had told Remus he was a ‘good one’ - more progressive than a lot of the other Wizengamot members, who tended towards a traditionalism that was regressive even compared to general wizarding society. Remus wonders who exactly he’s good  _ for  _ \- whether his relative modernity in outlook will make him kinder or crueller to Sirius. 

 

Remus’ mind drifts, occupies itself with these things - staring at the faces of the assembled council members, the few members of the public invited by CLPR for transparency, the  _ Prophet _ reporter perched primly a few rows away, her sleek black bob reflecting the overhead lighting. At the the back of one row sits Dumbledore, his fingers steepled under his nose, quiet and watchful. His face is unreadable and sombre, and he inclines his head towards Remus in neutral acknowledgement when their eyes meet. As head of the Order, he had been heavily involved in proceedings, back in 1981 - did he feel that this trial was a comment on his own failures? How had he, in his testimony, justified what was now clear judicial misconduct? Feeling cold, Remus looks away - he has long known that, as much as the old man has given him (Hogwarts, James, Lily, seven years of love and friendship and belonging) he has also taken away (freezing, horrifying nights shadowing the packs, endless obligation, mistrust staining everything like ink in water). 

 

He looks down at his own lap to find that his hands are shaking. He notices this visually, without really feeling it, marooned inside the shell of his body and vibrating with nervousness, feeling untethered from it with the unreality of the scenario. Surreptitiously he shoves them between his knees to keep them still, or at least to avoid the embarrassment of somebody noticing. God, he feels sick, the airy dizziness of mounting panic in his head like smoke, his mouth dry, his forehead clammy - he closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing, slow pulls in and out, trying to ground himself in small things: the hardness of the bench beneath him, the chill in the air, the rhythmic tapping of Rex’s finger to his left. 

 

He is so absorbed in this ritual, letting the dry voice of the Judge wash over him, that when a murmur moves through the court and he looks up again, the shock of seeing Sirius hits him like a slap of cold water. He looks, unsurprisingly, terrible: in person his skinniness is more pronounced, the overhead lighting hitting the fine bones of his face, the darkness pooling below his pronounced collarbones. His hands are cuffed in front of him, and Remus’ first thought is how uncomfortable the metal must be against the bones of his wrists, how unprotected he looks with them on show, like some undersea creature without its chiton, exposed and vulnerable. He is unsmiling and his hair has been tied back, gathered at the nape of his neck: his eyes are downcast as he is led to the stand, and as he steps into place he stumbles momentarily on nothing. A feeling of nausea spreads through Remus, surpassing even the anger and sorrow he’d expected - there is something horribly wrong about this Sirius, who seems so sick and weak. Remus remembers laying in bed immediately After, imagining the Dementors kissing Sirius, the mottled skin of their mouths on his familiar red one, the hollowness in his body after they finished - in these imaginings, Sirius had looked like he does now, sucked dry and half starved, too empty to even seem hungry.

 

“We begin today with the testimony of Character Witness Number Three” the Judge gestures to Remus and Rex nods towards him, “if we could ask you to approach the bench and state your name, please”. Remus’ shaking legs somehow hold him up as he stands and moves a foot forward, looking only at the older Wizard across the courtroom from him, terrified he will meet Sirius’ eye if he glances over at him now.

 

“It’s -” he clears his throat, something sticking “- Remus John Lupin.” 

 

“And you shared a dormitory with Mr Black and the late Mr Potter and Mr Pettigrew at Hogwarts?”

 

“Yes, for all seven years”

 

“And then you shared a flat with Mr Black from 1978 until the events of October 1981?”

 

“Not quite, I, um, I moved out of the flat in the Summer of that last year, the August”

 

“But having lived with the defendant for almost ten years, one would be confident in saying that you knew him as well as almost anyone else?” Why is the Judge asking this? Can they not simply read his Veritaserum statement without putting Remus through this ordeal? He feels a bead of sweat run down the length of his spine and is grateful for the dark suit jacket over his damp button-down shirt. 

 

“I certainly thought I did, yes” he answers after thinking for a moment, looking down at his own clammy hands.

 

“But now you’re not sure?”

 

“No”

 

“Because of the events of Autumn 1981?” 

 

“Among other things, yes”

 

“Ah, yes. Your statement -” Remus sucks in a nervous breath as the old man continues “- your statement says here that you began to doubt Mr Black’s allegiances in spring 1981, that he changed - can you elaborate on that for the court?”

 

“Well, he - that is to say, we were all very tense: James and Lily kept having to move, and I was being sent away every other week - “

 

“Working for the Order of the Phoenix, as per your testimony, and that of Character Witness Number One, Albus Dumbledore?”

 

“Right. Right, exactly, so nobody really knew what anyone was doing, and everyone was dying and the ones who weren’t dying were just - terrified, really, all the time. I suppose we all changed a lot towards the end, but Sirius was - he was losing it, it seemed at the time, and he was always out and could never tell me where he’d been when he got home. He was paranoid and he - he’d always been highly strung but into that summer he was just, unpredictably volatile. I could never tell what he was thinking, and everyone, James and Lily, Peter, we were all worried about him. And so you couldn’t help but think…”

 

“That Mr Black had defected to the Death Eaters, as you say in your statement here”

 

“Yes, precisely” Remus agrees, pointedly looking at a point on the wall behind the Judge’s shoulder, unable to even glance over at Sirius.

 

“So when the events of October 1981 occurred…”

 

“I had my worst suspicions, my worst fear, really, confirmed”. He hears his own voice wobble and coughs to cover the sound, narrowing his eyes to force back the tears that are threatening to well there.

 

“And subsequently, you have never doubted Mr Black’s guilt? Before these proceedings were set into motion?”

 

“I - at first, I wanted to think, that there was some other way for it to happen. One moment I would be convinced, and furious, and seconds later I’d be just, unable to accept it, looking for other ways it could have happened. I didn’t want it to be true. But once I understood that it had to be, I didn’t change my mind back”

 

“Thank you, Mr Lupin. Veritaserum -” the Judge moves to address the room at large “- will now be administered to the defendant. Mr Black, if you could drink the vial the clark is holding out to you - yes, good - and state your name for the court”.

 

Remus finally compels himself to look over at Sirius, where he is dwarfed by the wooden frame of the stand surrounding him. A tall Ministry employee with a bulbous, once-broken nose and a twirling red moustache is standing to one side of him, slipping a familiar ornate Veritaserum decanter back into his robes. There’s something desperate and hunted in Sirius’ grey eyes, which are downcast, as if he is as eager to avoid eye contact as Remus himself.

 

“Sirius Orion Black” he says, his voice hoarse, the kind of scratching rasp only achieved by chronic disuse or else extended screaming. Remus wonders which is most likely. Just hearing it, even so changed, sends an unpleasant wet feeling blooming in his chest. 

 

“Mr Black, you and Mr Lupin lived together for almost ten years, both during and after Hogwarts?”

 

“Yes” (a whisper)

 

“And would you agree that Mr Lupin knew you well?”

 

“Yes - I, yes. Probably better than anyone”.

 

“You were close friends?”

 

“Yes”

 

“Mr Lupin told us that the two of you were lovers, can you corroborate this?” To his credit, the Judge keeps his voice neutral, ignoring the shocked whispering filling the room.

 

“Y-yes. Between 78 and 81”. Sirius sounds like he wants to cry - there’s a strained look in his eyes that Remus recognises from the end of their relationship, something very Black and dangerous and sad. To Remus, who has been dreading this revelation, its actualisation feels very small, although he notes with some trepidation that the _ Prophet  _ reporter is triple underlining something in her notepad.

 

“And do you agree with his account of your behaviour in early 1981?”

 

“I do”

 

“And were his conclusions correct? Had you indeed defected to the Death Eaters?”

 

“No”. A murmur runs through the small room, and a sick feeling tingles low in Remus’ belly.  _ It doesn’t mean he’s innocent - he could have gone over later on - this doesn’t mean -  _ he tells himself.

 

“Can you elaborate on the reasons for your changing behaviour, which aroused Mr Lupin’s suspicions?”

 

“I. We…” Sirius flounders a little, as if he’s trying to remember how to speak more than two words together. “I was terrified. Our friends kept turning up dead, and having to go into hiding, or on dangerous missions. It felt like nowhere was safe. It just… it was hard. I was drinking - we all were...and we knew there was a spy. Dumbledore had told us, someone was leaking information to the other side, and it was someone close. We thought - I’m sorry, I am, we thought it was Remus”. With a sick feeling, Remus notices the  _ Prophet  _ reporter writing furiously, barely able to conceal her smile at the juicy turn the hearing is taking. 

 

The knowledge that his dearest friends, the people he has spent half a decade mourning, whose son he has raised as his own, suspected him, is gutting. That Sirius thought so too is, hypocritically, also wounding.. _I was never,_ he thinks, _more than a monster-in-waiting to them._ Tears do prick his eyes now, and he angrily blinks them away, furious with himself. Is that why Sirius turned coat in the end? The final push towards the dark?

 

“You suspected Mr Lupin” the Judge reiterates “I see. For the benefit of the court, I will state that Mr Lupin is not on trial today, and has by virtue of his Veritaserum statement proven his own innocence in this matter”. He looks pointedly at the _ Prophet _ reporter when he says this, and Remus, somewhere under the swirling grief and anxiety, wants to smile a little. 

 

Sirius has his head in his hands, the matted, dull hair pulling out from its tie under his long fingers. The judge eyes him warily. “Mr Black, can we proceed? Do you need a recess?” he asks.

 

“No. Go on.” Sirius chokes, sounding wrecked.

 

“In his statement, Mr Lupin confirmed that to the last of his knowledge you were secret keeper for the Potter family - is this true?”

 

“Yes. But we -” Sirius takes a deep breath, pain etched in fine lines around his eyes, “we swapped. Just before”.

 

“Why?”

 

“I - I didn’t think that I was a safe choice anymore. Too obvious, for one - anyone would have guessed they’d choose me, and I…”

 

“Go on,” the judge urges, when Sirius trails off.

 

“Remus had moved out. I had no concrete proof that he was the spy, and I, I didn’t trust my own ability to keep the secret from him, if he tried to extract it from me. I didn’t trust myself.”

 

“Your relationship to Mr Lupin was such that you believed you might reveal something accidentally, had he tried to ascertain the Potters’ location?”

 

“Yes. I hope that I would have - I should have - but it was… everything was very...” 

 

Hurt and confusion mingle in Remus. He’d packed his bags and moved back to his parents’ place one hot day in August when Sirius had been away - for the Order, presumably, although by that point he’d no longer told Remus when and where he would be at any given time. Done with all of it - the lying, the constant searching for truth behind the mania in Sirius’ eyes, the touching without speaking - he’d done what came naturally to him, folded himself shut and run away. 

 

“And so who did the Potters turn to next?”

 

“Peter. Peter Pettigrew.”

 

It feels like a punch to the gut. All the scenarios Remus had dreamed up in the early days, the ways Sirius could be innocent - he had always come back to this: the rat. The finger, presented to Peter’s weeping mother, the smallness of the fragment yet more proof of Sirius’ utter brutality. The rat, the rat. 

 

“And on the 1st of November, please could you explain what happened for the court?”

 

“I wanted to kill him. I did, I saw James -” here Sirius’ voice does break, and when he carries on his voice sounds thick and heavy “- James, and, and Lily, and Harry there, crying, and I wanted to take him home. Hagrid came and said Dumbledore had sent for him. I didn’t want to hand him over, but I thought - I was just so  _ angry _ and I - I went after Peter, where I knew he’d be, hiding in Muggle London, using them as human shields. I didn’t care - I did, I wanted him  _ dead _ for what he’d done…” 

 

Sirius looks every bit the criminal as he says this, tear stained and murderous “but when I got there he was smiling and telling me  _ be calm, Sirius  _ and  _ we can talk about this, can’t we? _ As if there was anything to discuss. He was such a coward. And then I saw that he was smiling, and I knew he was going to do something - something awful.  _ I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, _ he said to me, and he had something in a bloody handkerchief, and he tossed it to me - it was his toe, he’d cut it off, and I knew what he was going to do. When the explosion cleared he was gone, and there were muggles everywhere, on the ground, and his fucking toe just lying there, and I just. There was nobody else who knew it wasn't me. And I’d been so stupid. And I just laughed and laughed, because it was so horrible, and it was all my fault”. 

 

Sirius covers his face with his bony hands, doesn’t seem able to continue. It’s like the Veritaserum has pulled everything out of him - his words, his energy - sucked him dry and exhausted him. Remus is reeling, feels very far from his body, which is somehow still standing up. He is vaguely aware of someone near him - is it Rex? - asking if he’s okay, the voice sounding distorted and underwater. A sensation of spreading cold travels through him and his vision dims, dims, until Remus faints in a final, swooping chill.

 


	6. Six

The week since Remus’ first day in court has been a flurry of requests for interviews and avoiding owls. Since Sirius’ testimony, the Wizengamot has focused on the illegal animagus aspect of the story, forcing Sirius to transform into Padfoot as verification and Remus once again to testify under Veritaserum - this time regarding his lycanthropy and his friends’ schoolboy activities to accompany him. 

 

Seeing Sirius as a dog had almost broken him - the fur was so matted, an equivalent of his human condition, and Remus had wanted to pet that familiar head, scratch him behind his moth-bitten ears, his hand aching for the warm fur of memory under his palm. The knobs of his canine spine had jutted forward alarmingly, a picture of neglect, and something about Sirius’ big, sad grey eyes as a dog had been easier to feel uncomplicated pity for, a warm and aching tenderness in Remus that is now normally reserved for Harry’s grazed knees. The knowledge that Remus has been living his life, getting by, hating Sirius, whilst all the while he has been innocent, rotting away for four years in that hellish place, is almost too much to bear, and so Remus has pushed it down, focused as he did in 1981 on the facts of his daily routine, his obligations to the tiny life that depends entirely on him.

 

When he’d collected Harry from the Burrow, after four gruelling days at the Ministry, Remus had been terrified to face the Weasleys - the Prophet already having a field day with the admittedly salacious new information: the betrayal, the last-minute switch, the ‘secret’ romance (secret mainly, Remus wants to point out, because most people who knew them then are  _ dead _ ). When Molly had placed a motherly hand on his upper arm and asked him, very genuinely, how he was doing, he’d found himself unable to speak, very aware of how he looked - red eyed and exhausted, a few pounds down from the constant anxious nausea. He’d explained, then - although she’d insisted he hadn’t needed to - the story in brief, wanting it to come from him rather than the almost unrecognisable hyperbole in the papers. Sad around the eyes, she’d sent the two of them on their way with two huge trays of home-cooked food and orders to come over whenever they fancied. “I can take Harry,” she’d told Remus “any time, if you’re struggling”.

 

Having Harry gone, however, would be the worst case scenario: the past is surrounding Remus, and Harry is his only anchor to the life he’s built for himself here in the present. The steadying love and obligation Remus feels for him is once again his savior: he feels all manner of self destructive urges welling in himself, just as they had in the immediate aftermath back then. He’s always preferred to run away, to hide from his problems rather than address them - parenthood has forced him, finally, to learn to confront things, and Remus is grateful for it now, as he sits in his parents’ old cottage in Wales, Harry safely tucked into bed and a letter he doesn’t want to read in his lap.

 

_ Remus - as per our discussion on April 15 - the Ministry are very keen to release Mr Black as soon as is practical. Certainly now he is known to be innocent he cannot be held in Azkaban whilst alternative arrangements are made. I have suggested the farmstead - the wardwork really is excellent, and given he remains (on paper at least) Harry’s godfather, the arrangement makes a certain sense legally speaking. Please reply ASAP - if you have objections I suppose I can ask for Sirius to be held in custody at the Ministry a while longer, although not ideal. _

 

_ ABPWD _

 

The manipulative bastard. As if Remus has any opportunity to really object, when the suggestion has already been made by one of Britain’s most influential wizards - and when the alternative is Sirius remaining in the holding cells indefinitely. As if the shining, bright day in 1971, when Dumbledore had personally visited this very house and told a tiny, moonsore Remus that arrangements had been made, that he could indeed go to school, didn’t surface in his mind whenever any request was made of him. As if he hadn’t been going along with plans that left him colder and more alone for his entire adult life simply because of the cocktail of guilt and obligation, the crushing need to be liked, that he felt on account of his enormous and gaping sense of lacking, of being not enough, or too much of the wrong things. 

 

Remus had, of course, assented to Dumbledore’s subsequently requested firecall, and lamely made his case for not hosting Sirius - the acrimonious nature of their 1981 parting, the potential impact on Harry of Sirius’ disruptive presence in the house - but his capitulation had always been a foregone conclusion. 

 

Now he waits, feeling curiously like he had in the weeks before Harry himself had arrived - he re-checks the wards and tidies almost compulsively, realising how silly it is to be concerned about the state of the house when Sirius has resided in a cell for four years. He makes up a bed in the spare room for Sirius, shifting the boxes of unused clutter - old toys, books, papers from Remus’ various completed projects - to the disused barn outside the house. As he does this, he realises, wrenchingly, that the last real bed Sirius slept in was probably the one they’d shared, at the old flat in Brixton. He pushes the thought down as he tucks the duvet into the corners of the cover, smooths out each wrinkle with his hands, imagines Sirius’ scarred and diminished form like an ink stain on the sheets.

 

***

 

He arrives on a Tuesday. Harry is already at the small primary school he attends in Ottery St. Catchpole. Last year, Remus had agonised over whether to homeschool Harry or to let him enrol there: once again, the choice had been between giving him a normal life and keeping him as safe as possible. In the end, he hadn’t been able to deprive Harry of the chance to share his school days with friends, remembering how lonely he himself had felt after being pulled out of primary immediately following the bite. After a series of meetings with the headmistress, a surprisingly stern-looking witch in her mid forties, during which Remus had personally checked the protective magic on the little schoolhouse and emphasised (in possibly more intense tones than the average parent) the need for Harry to be protected, he’d finally agreed. Several of Molly and Arthur’s boys, including Harry’s best friend Ron, already attend the school, and apparating Harry over from the farmstead every day is worth the effort to have him surrounded by familiar faces. Arthur and Remus had worked together the previous summer on an emergency plan for Harry, should any shifty characters appear, or anything suspicious occur, and Remus has  _ almost _ stopped panicking if he’s a couple of minutes late out after school.

 

The only downside to apparating Harry in personally (he’s been told he can start flooing in himself when he’s eight, an age that seems almost unbearably ancient to a five year old boy) is navigating the crowds of mums at the school gate, the unmarried of whom seem to regard Remus as some kind of saint for raising a little boy on his own, and who seem willing to look past a few nicks and scars when they see his naked ring finger. Molly is no help with this and seems to actively encourage them - the woman has a Shakespearean need to pair off all the people in her life. Darkly, he hopes that the press coverage he’s currently enduring will scare some of them off their pursuit. He can dream. 

 

He is sitting rigidly in his dad’s old armchair, the one that faces the window to the yard and, as such, gives Remus a perfect view of the apparition point at the edge of the property. He can’t stop the nervous, sewing-machine tapping of his leg, can’t still his hands… nobody gave him an exact time for Sirius’ arrival, save that due to the arranged Portkey’s expiration time of 1pm, it would necessarily be before then. 

 

At 11am he tries to eat some toast, and at 11:30 abandons it as a lost cause. He tries to read a book, and is just realising that he’s now read the same paragraph thrice - his eyes skidding over each word, stumbling over them like they’re ancient runes, not taking in any meaning other than the shapes of their forms on the page - when the brass bell by the front door sounds, indicating magic is gathering by the property line, an early indicator of apparition. He snaps his book shut, suddenly unsure of what to do with his hands. A tingle of nervousness, like the fuzzy static from a speaker, hums coldly in his belly as he sees Sirius crack into existence at the gate, looking as gaunt as he had the last time Remus saw him, cold sweat beading his pale forehead under the courtroom lights.

 

The walk from the gate to the farmhouse seems to take him forever, the distance stretching between them, Sirius’ face blank and impassive where once it was expressive to the point of indiscretion. When he’s only a couple of metres away Remus manages to get his legs to obey him and stands in the doorway waiting for him, unsure whether to smile in greeting or not, or if he could even produce one if he wanted to. Once again he is stricken by Sirius’ smallness, how slight he looks, somehow more pronounced in the simple dark jeans and t shirt that he is wearing - Elfrida’s doing, Remus supposes, gratefully. 

 

“Sirius” he says in greeting, lost for anything else. Sirius just nods, his eyes wide and nervous, and Remus moves to let him in through the narrow doorway. He just stands in the hall, looking around at the cosy sitting room, its pin-neatness evidence of Remus’ over-preparation, his need to busy his anxious hands. 

 

“Do you have any - where are your things?” Remus asks, stupidly, and Sirius just holds his empty hands out to his sides, as if to ask,  _ what things? _ Right. “Do you want anything? Tea? Food, I can -”

 

“Remus,” Sirius interrupts, still in that hoarse voice from the Ministry “can I just...I need to…” He gestures to the sofa and Remus notices he’s swaying a little on his feet. He finds himself nodding, saying “Yes, yes of course, anything, go ahead…” So many words, they’re spilling out of him, small nervous chatter, the need to have  _ something  _ to offer Sirius, wrongfooted by the scenario, by the feeling of needing to tiptoe around him like some wounded animal, a creature more alien to him even than a total stranger would have been. 

 

Sirius lowers himself carefully onto the soft, floppy old sofa and closes his eyes momentarily. Perching on the edge of the far end of the same, Remus can see that his skin is waxy and clammy, the bruise-like staining under his eyes especially pronounced. 

 

“Apparating over was...a lot” says Sirius, sounding tired and embarrassed, and Remus feels a pang of sympathy for him, for how drained of magic he must be. 

 

“Is there anything I can do? Anything I can get you?” he asks

 

“I think I’ll just...sit here for a bit,” a deep inhale, as if asking for anything is painful, arduous, “and maybe - a bath? Elfrida let me take a shower and cut my hair, but it’s not the same”. 

 

Something jealous wells in Remus, unpleasantly, at the thought of somebody else being the one to give those things to him, even though he knows it’s illogical, that he doesn’t really have any claim to this man anymore, to be the one to care for him even in these simple, practical ways. Every small way in which Sirius has been diminished - his slightness, the flatness of his voice, the dullness of his shorn hair, which has been cut in a straight line at the nape of his neck, as if the ponytail was simply snipped off at the band - sends a hot pang of guilt through him.  _ I did this to you _ , he thinks,  _ I should have known, why didn’t I  _ **_know_ ** _? _

 

“I’ll draw you one. You remember where the bathroom is?” 

 

All four of them had spent a golden week here in the Summer of their fifth year, the last before Sirius lived with James and was always at the Potters’ - it’s one of Remus’ most beloved (and therefore most avoided) memories: Sirius, fifteen and handsome, the late July sun catching the ends of his waving hair, picking out the rich, deep browns within the black, crying with laughter as James tried, unsuccessfully, to speak in Remus’ father’s accent. Peter’s daft snorting laugh and smuggled cider in the old barn. There had been a couple of visits after school, too: weekend trips back to see Remus’ mother as she shrank away, and then afterwards just to check on his Dad - they’d sat at the kitchen table and nursed endless cups of tea (milk in first, but Sirius hadn’t complained), the love between them like a glowing, precious secret, like magic under disillusionment. Sirius nods.

 

Remus passes down the hallway to the bathroom and runs the taps, gets the water just right - hotter than he’d make it for Harry. He can’t help but imagine Sirius sliding into it, his tightly knotted muscles relaxing in the heat, his pale cheeks pinking up in the steam. He imagines the spreading warmth of the water over Sirius’ lean thighs, the starkness of his new tattoos, the sharp jutting of his ribs, his hips, sinking into the water. His dark hair slick with water, pulled back from his face, all angles and shadows. Remus lets these thoughts linger for a moment until he pulls himself together, reminds himself that Sirius’ body is not something he is allowed, even in imagination, even in memory.

 

Casting a warming charm over the bath to keep it stable, Remus stops off in the kitchen and busies himself with the ritual of making tea, two cups, hot and bitter. Careful not to let them spill over, he reemerges into the sitting room, sets them down on the coffee table by his battered old paperback, Harry’s crayoned colouring in book.

  
Sirius is still in the corner of the sofa, clearly having fallen asleep in the ten minutes Remus was absent. His face looks a little softer, cheeks softened by the slight parting of his lips, his brow furrowed as if he’s trying to work out something difficult. A muscle under his eye keeps twitching. A warm surge of protectiveness washes over Remus, and he finds himself feeling bewilderingly close to tears.  _ I don’t know how to help you _ , he thinks, frustrated and overwhelmed by his own helplessness. There’s a blanket folded over the back of the couch, and if he were a braver man he’d drape it over Sirius, who is so thin, must be cold in only his jeans and t shirt. Indecision - the fear of offending Sirius somehow, overstepping his bounds, holds him back, and instead he picks up the book and settles into the stiff-backed armchair to read, listening to the tiny whimpers Sirius makes as he dreams.


	7. Seven

It’s coming up for 1pm when Sirius wakes with a start, seems confused for a moment before he works out where he is.

 

“Hey” Remus offers, unsure, trying to give him a smile that is both encouraging and non-patronising. 

 

“Sorry” Sirius says, and cringes a bit, like he’s embarrassed to have fallen asleep at all.

 

“Don’t worry. We have about” Remus checks his watch, “two hours before I have to go and collect Harry. Is there anything you want to do? I could make some food, or -”

 

“Tell me about it. About you, what you’ve been doing. About H- the kid, what’s he like?” Sirius seems reluctant to use Harry’s name, and Remus wonders if he’s nervous about meeting him - he was only a baby last time Sirius saw him, probably won’t remember him at all now. He remembers how he felt when Harry first arrived in 1982, and feels a tug of sympathy for Sirius, marooned four years from his nearest frame of reference with no guide.

 

“Oh, Harry, he’s...he’s really great, actually, Sirius. Lots of friends, and he looks just like J-” here Remus stops himself, seeing Sirius’ look of apprehension “well, he’s just lovely. Really lively, and kind”.

 

“Like Lily” Sirius says, softly.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, he doesn’t know everything, yet, so just… try and be gentle about it around him, I suppose. It’s a lot for a four-year-old. I’m sort of, building it up slowly”.

 

“What does he know?”

 

“He knows that James and Lily are his mum and dad, and that they’re gone. That we were friends, but there was a war, and so he lives with me, and… Sirius, are you okay? I can stop, come on, let’s talk about something else.” 

 

Sirius has his head in his hands again, like in the courtroom, but he shakes his head for Remus to carry on anyway. “What did you say about me?” he asks, from behind his fingers.

 

“Just that you were friends with James and Lily too, and that you’ve been away for a long time and… you’re going to stay with us, for a while. Bit hard to explain all the rest in Harry-terms”. 

 

Sirius chokes out a sort of watery laugh at this and looks up - his eyes are red, and coupled with the pallid cast of his skin and the deep gouges under his eyes and cheekbones it gives him a kind of haunted, undead look. Remus is momentarily - shamefully - worried that Sirius is going to scare Harry, but obviously he can’t say anything to him about it.  _ Hey, Sirius,  _ he thinks,  _ sorry that I didn’t trust you and left you in prison to have your very soul sucked out for four years, I’m just worried it’s made you look a bit frightening, so can you…  _ can he what, anyway? It’s not like anything more than time, sleep and a few good meals can do anything for Sirius as he is now. 

 

“I think,” says Sirius, voice still sounding choked and wet, “I think I’d like to take that bath now, if it’s still going”. 

 

“Oh. Right. Erm, yes, of course, you know where to go - just let me…” 

 

Remus bustles into the bathroom and pulls out a towel for Sirius - he tries to find one without any cheerful cartoon sea creatures on it. When he catches sight of the mirror of the medicine cabinet, Sirius is reflected in it too, having followed Remus down the hall. He jumps, involuntarily, and hates himself for doing so, for the look of pain that flashes across Sirius’ face when he recoils. “Sorry,” Remus says, “I’m a bit...jumpy, these days”. Sirius just nods and takes the towel from Remus’ clutching hands - the hard skin of his thumb runs along Remus’ palm momentarily as he does so and they both start at the contact. It becomes clear Sirius isn’t going to say anything else, is waiting for Remus to leave the room, and so he does; once the bathroom door is safely locked, Remus fishes out a jumper - a deep navy blue one, thick and almost over-warm - and leaves it folded outside for him.

 

***

 

Remus is smoking outside the kitchen window when Sirius emerges. His hair hangs damply, skimming his strong jaw, and his skin is a little flushed. He’s pulled the black jeans back on, with the jumper Remus left out - it pads him a little, hides some of that Azkaban emaciation - and his white feet are bare on the softly carpeted floor. He looks not like the Sirius Remus remembers, but much closer to him than at any previous encounter so far. Despite his tiredness, his skinniness, he really is still very handsome, Remus catches himself thinking, and then pushes it down angrily, stepping on his cigarette butt before he vanishes it. He doesn’t  _ get _ to think that anymore. 

 

“Filthy habit” Sirius says, as Remus comes back inside. It’s the first thing even resembling levity Remus has heard from him all day - it seems off coming from this strange, quiet version of him, like he’s reading a script written for someone else. 

 

“I know. Do you still…?”

 

“Oh” Sirius looks a bit bewildered, “I don’t really know. I didn’t in - I didn’t  _ there _ , and I...No. I’m not sure”. 

 

The fledgling conversation peters out, at that. So hard to work out where these pressure points are, when everything -  _ everything _ \- seems to come back round to Azkaban. To Remus’ mistakes. To the chasm of loss and waste between them, across which Remus has no idea how to communicate. He taps the little tin of rolling tobacco on the window ledge. Says, awkwardly, “Well...help yourself. You know, if you want”. 

 

Sirius’ jaw tenses oddly and his brow furrows a bit as he moves through some inscrutable mental process. After a second he nods, pads closer to the laminate worksurface, flips Remus’ battered tin open - his fingers are so thin that the knuckles look swollen - and frowns down at a rolling paper as he sprinkles tobacco into it. 

 

“Don’t suppose anyone’s invented a spell to do this for you, while I was -  in the last few years?” he mumbles, and Remus remembers with a fond, tortured pang, how many times he’d taken the piss out of Sirius’ shit rolling skills, how comically bad they always were, how he’d always suspected he fucked them up at least partially on purpose, to get Remus to do it for him. 

 

“I can…”

 

“No, it’s fine”

 

Sirius struggles valiantly with the thin paper for a second, rolling it between index fingers and thumbs and then delicately unpeeling it when it rips, tipping the little cylinder of tobacco into a new one to start again. Remus has already rolled himself a second, with the efficiency of habit, and wordlessly passes it to Sirius, holding out his palm for the mangled, half formed thing with which he’s been wrestling. If he were a braver man, he’d grin at Sirius around the white filter parked between his lips, rib him about it, but the days of good-natured mockery are over, the air between them so fragile it feels like it might crack with one wrong move. He rescues Sirius’ attempt and toes on the shoes he only just kicked off, directing Sirius to follow outside with a jerk of his head. 

 

There’s a faint breeze and the mid-afternoon garden is incongruously pleasant, the warm light gentle where it streaks the long grass, filters down through the ivy that climbs the farmhouse’s outer walls. The blunt ends of Sirius’ hair flutter delicately. A flood of feeling - a wet sort of pain - wells in Remus’ chest looking at him, the sleeves of the jumper falling past his bony wrists, his pale feet bare on the flagstone. He digs in his pockets for his shitty muggle bic lighter, offers it to Sirius after sorting out his own. He looks grateful that he won’t be called upon either to use his wand to light up, or be forced to ask Remus to do it for him (Remus has still, he notes, not seen him use any magic since his apparition). 

 

Sirius coughs on his first drag, and then his second. Remus is reminded, powerfully, of the first time they smoked together, fifth year down by the Quidditch stands, Sirius gleeful with spite, cackling at his own impression of Walburga ( _ “filthy muggle habit” _ ), Remus grinning along, warm with the pleasure of being alone with Sirius, of having him to himself for once. James had declined to join them, citing his athletic ambitions, when they’d invited him in the common room - although the vociferousness of his protestations had probably had something to do with impressing Lily, who’d been curled up reading in an armchair nearby. Remus, who’d seen Lily cadging fags off of sixth year boys on at least three separate occasions, had rolled his eyes and said nothing. 

 

Then it had been Remus coughing, Sirius grinning almost condescendingly over at him around his own cigarette, looking cool and natural with it on his first try,  _ of fucking course _ , leather jacket open over his school robes and the carefully cultivated wave of his hair falling over one eye. It’s hard to imagine Sirius so effortlessly confident now. They smoke in silence, Sirius tilting his head towards the birds swinging in the apple trees by the north wall, and for a moment it’s so sad and peaceful that Remus feels the knots in his shoulders, the tense, tugging feeling in his gut starting to unfurl. Through the kitchen window, he sees the long, spindly arms of his clock ticking towards  _ home time _ , realises with a jolt that he’s almost late.

 

“Shit,” he says, breaking the sunlit quiet, “I have to go. We’ll be back soon, will you be -”

 

Sirius gives him a tense nod before he’s done - Remus feels embarrassed to have even tried to ask if Sirius would be okay alone here, after his years alone  _ there _ . 

 

“Right. Well, there’s, there’s tea in the cupboard, and books, and, erm, we won’t be long, anyway, so…” he garbles. He’s never been a big talker, so why now is he so compelled to fill all the gaps in sound with his useless, placatory nonsense? Something unreadable and uncomfortable is twisting Sirius’ gaunt face, rendering him harder, sharper. “I’ll be fine” he tells Remus, and neither of them know if it’s a lie.

 

***

 

Remus bears the school-gates crowd with slightly poorer grace than usual, tapping his hands anxiously against his thighs as he waits for Harry to emerge from the little, brightly painted building. Nora Belby is talking his ear off about her kitchen renovation - so hard to cook around the builders, she’s thinking of just going out to eat tomorrow instead, but dining alone is so awkward, isn’t it? Remus smiles distractedly and nods, only half-following the conversation as the first kids start to trickle forth from the red front door in ones and twos, Harry’s shock of dark hair stark against the cluster of Weasley-orange he’s surrounded by. He’s laughing with Ron and Fred at something George is saying, making the oldest one - Percy - frown disapprovingly. He still has two years before he starts Hogwarts, but he’s the most serious child Remus has ever met. How he copes, living with the twins, he’ll never know; school will probably be a relief. He gives Remus an imperious little nod as Harry splits off from the pack, as if he’s a fellow parent, and Remus suppresses a laugh. Harry trots towards him, that off-kilter little kid jog that’s always seems a couple of degrees from tripping fully over, and Remus hold out his arms, lifting Harry, bookbag swinging wildly, into the air. He’ll be too big for this soon, embarrassed to be affectionate in front of his friends, and so Remus takes every opportunity he can while it’s on offer. Harry burbles happily about his day all the way to the apparition point, and Remus feels, more than usual, extremely grateful that he has this - that Harry’s life is made up of spelling tests and friends and class pets, that the worst thing that happened to him today was Fred sprinkling glitter into his hair during arts and crafts. 

 

“Remember that we’ve got a visitor at the house, when we get back” Remus tells him, hoisting him more securely into his arms for the side-along home. Harry nods - he’s sometimes shy with other adults, especially men - but he doesn’t seem too worried. “Okay, big breath!” he tells Harry, and closes his eyes, concentrates on  _ home  _ as the familiar squeezing feeling envelops the pair of them, leaves them standing, slightly nauseous as ever, at the farmstead’s perimeter. Remus puts Harry down and he sets off, lolloping towards the house - even at full pelt, his little legs are no match for Remus’ awkwardly long limbs, and they reach the front door at about the same time.

 

Inside, Remus gets Harry’s coat and shoes off, hangs them with his bag on the little Harry-height pegs he’d installed last year a few feet below the main rack. Rounding the corner into the sitting room, Harry hangs behind Remus, bumping against his shin, his small hands clutching at the denim. Sirius is sitting awkwardly in the armchair, his posture weirdly stiff, his eyes wide as if startled. He stares at Harry, who stares back from behind Remus’ legs. Remus rests a reassuring hand on top of the mop of black hair, ruffles it, saying “Harry, this is Sirius, remember me telling you about him? He went to school with me and your dad?”. Harry just nods, and Sirius clears his throat, gives him the world’s most awkward smile, half-waving one bony hand from the chair. “Hi” he says, his voice scratchy and strained. 

 

“Are you going to say hello, Harry?” Remus asks, trying to make his voice soft and encouraging, a genuine question rather than an instruction. Harry is silent for a second before he quietly mumbles “ ‘llo” into the crook of Remus’ knee. He’s clearly feeling uncomfortable, awkward, and so Remus suggests: “Why don’t you go and get out of your uniform, then?”, remembering to call “And make sure you actually hang it up, Harry!” after him as he scrambles off down the corridor to his room.

 

Remus looks back at Sirius, who is still stock-still in the chair, frozen like a trapped animal. “You ok?” he asks, knowing it’s a stupid question. Sirius nods tersely, his haunted face tense.

 

“I know it must be a bit of a shock, he really does look just like -” he offers, and Sirius visibly tenses.

 

“Yeah”

 

“Right. I’m going to get tea on, then, and I’ll need to do Harry’s homework with him - we’ll probably eat at fiveish, is that alright for you?”

 

Sirius looks cornered, as if Remus had just invited him to drink poison, and says in a halting, stilted voice “I’m actually going to go out. For a walk. Clear my head, you know. So…” he leaves it hanging.

 

“Oh, alright. I’ll, erm - I’ll leave some out for you, then, I suppose”

 

“Thanks” says Sirius, giving him that pained smile again. They sit in strained silence for a few minutes until Harry calls out from his room: “Remus! I can’t reach the  _ coat hangers _ !” - he stands, rolling his eyes fondly, calls “I’ll come now, just wait a second Harry!” over his shoulder. When he turns back, smiling, to say something to Sirius, he’s already gone.


	8. Eight

The weeks since Sirius arrived have been...challenging. Remus finds himself hovering in doorways, holding his breath to see if Sirius is in a room before he enters it, then hating himself for being relieved when he isn’t. It’s so hard to see him so silent - during the day he lurks around, reading Remus’ books and making endless cups of tea that go cold before anyone drinks them. They mainly converse in half sentences - “Do you…”, “Would you like…”, “Sorry, can I just -”.

 

When Harry’s home it’s both better and worse: Remus is glad to have the distraction, dinners to make and reading to go through, laundry to fold and put away, but Sirius is so still and quiet, like being around Harry is painful. He rarely eats with them, preferring to put on the dog and go for long, meandering walks around the neighbouring countryside, coming back after Harry’s bedtime, his fur snarled with burrs and leaves, paws scuffed from the rough terrain. It’s not unlike having a ghost, having him here - a silent, pale presence in the corner of Remus’ vision, a sombre, brooding spectre with whom Remus has no idea of how to connect. Harry seems mostly unbothered by it, but Remus can tell he’s still shy with Sirius, afraid to ask his usual stream of questions or share his little stories, going quiet and bashful when he enters a room. The worry of it - of whether having Sirius here is bad for Harry, for all three of them, keeps Remus wakeful and worried, concerned he’s being selfish by keeping him here if it’s doing more harm than good. But where else could he go? Haunting Remus’ spare room is the closest to having a home that Sirius can get, now - Grimmauld Place lurks in the back of his mind as an option, but the idea of packing Sirius off there, to the site of so much unhappiness, seems impossibly cruel.

 

One evening in May, Remus is sitting in the kitchen going over some papers, Harry safely tucked away in bed, when the big black dog paws at the back door. Remus goes to open it, wondering why Sirius hasn’t just transformed back, opened it himself, and sees it - his front left paw, wet with blood, a thick shard of jagged glass protruding from the central pad. Padfoot whines, holding the limb aloft, and limps on three legs into the kitchen, sitting heavily on his haunches and tilting his head up at Remus. Its steely eyes, the man behind them, tug at Remus’ chest, and he holds the paw in both hands, mutters “You silly dog, what have you done?” at him even as he summons the little first-aid kit he keeps beneath the sink. As Sirius whines, he digs through the little box, pulling out a pair of tweezers. “Don’t bite me,” he warns, “this is going to hurt a bit”. 

 

The dog huffs out a fed-up sounding breath and wiggles his injured paw again, a  _ get on with it  _ gesture that feels so disarmingly Sirius that Remus almost smiles. He holds it still in one hand and leans forward, carefully taking the shard between the teeth of the tweezers and pulling, gently, trying to get it all out in one piece. The whimpering is a little pathetic, but he manages to extract it, blood flowing freely from the unplugged wound. Sirius licks at it, and Remus does smile then, telling him “You’ll have to turn back now, Sirius, let me have a look at it”. He’s something of an expert in tending to minor injuries after several years of parenting a well-behaved but unusually clumsy little boy, and sets about assembling what he’s going to need - alcohol wipes, dressings, a little spool of gauze - as Sirius shifts, is suddenly human again, kneeling up on the kitchen floor with his bloodied, white hand aloft. 

 

“How did you do this?”

 

“I was walking out by the treeline - there was a smashed bottle out there, didn’t see it in time” Sirius sounds embarrassed, and Remus tells him, “Give it here, then”, holding out his hand for Sirius’.

 

“I can do it - you don’t have to -”

 

“Sirius, do you know how many times I’ve done this in the last few months? Just give me your hand.”

 

Sirius rolls his eyes, still kneeling, but he allows Remus to take his hand, palm-up. The gash is crooked, but doesn’t seem to have any glass still stuck, and Sirius’ skin feels warm against Remus’ callused fingers. Warmth pools in his stomach at the intimacy of it - of holding Sirius hand in both of his, looking down from his chair at the dining table. From this angle, slightly above him, he can see Sirius’ face closely. The dark circles are still there - is he sleeping at all? - but his cheeks have filled out a little from the weeks of Remus’ cooking, and his hair has grown out a little, softening the straight edge where the ends had been chopped off.  _ He’s so beautiful _ , Remus thinks, and hates himself. His breathing suddenly sounds very loud in the quiet room, and he says softly, more to break the silence than anything else, “This is going to sting a bit”. 

 

Sirius is silent as Remus swabs the cut with a disinfectant wipe, the only sign of pain a tightening in his jaw. Remus dabs at it carefully, thoroughly, before he adds a dressing and winds the delicate roll of gauze around his palm, between finger and thumb, securing it with micropore tape when he’s done. He has the instinctive, mad impulse to kiss Sirius’ bandaged palm when he’s done, the way he would for one of Harry’s cuts and grazes, but he catches himself before he does so.

 

“All done” he tells Sirius, gently.

 

“Thanks”

 

Remus is still holding Sirius’ hand. Sirius is still balanced on his knees, looking up at him. They stay there, silent in the kitchen, for a long moment. Remus isn’t sure how long it lasts, but when the silence is cut through by the screaming whistle of the kettle coming to a boil, he’s both relieved and, inexplicably, disappointed, as Sirius pulls his hand back and smoothly rises to his feet, heading off to the spare room, leaving Remus, gut-churning, alone in the empty kitchen.

 

***

 

The dream is no worse than normal - which is to say, it’s bad. Remus wakes from disconnected images - Sirius’ hands, glass driven through both palms, Harry walking towards the line of trees, something large and sharp-toothed waiting just inside. James, Lily, Peter: Peter, his rodent body limp in Remus’ jaws, the copper taste of blood filling his throat - in a cold sweat. His watch, stowed on the bedside table, tells him he has five hours before he has to get up with Harry. The stillness of the middle of the night, its dark and enveloping peace, surrounds Remus as he makes his way down the corridor to the kitchen. 

 

As he passes Sirius’ door, he hears a low whining, half man half dog, and he’s opening the door before he can think about whether it’s a good idea or not. Something about the time, the unreal suspension of his daytime self, makes his usual rules -  _ don’t intrude on Sirius, don’t force him to speak to you, don’t impose yourself on him when by all rights he should hate you, probably he does _ \- seem far away, inconsequential.

 

Sirius is asleep, thrashing in the thin strip of light filtering between his drawn curtains. His cheeks are wet, his face contorted with whatever dreamscape he’s currently traversing, but something about the smallness of his narrow frame, half-covered by heavy blankets, his hair fanning out on the pillow like an oil spill, reminds Remus of how very young he is. How young they both are. He remembers long nights of sleeplessness in the dorms, James and Peter both untroubled and snoring, the pair of them keeping each other quiet company against their own separate nightmares. The long, wakeful early mornings after school, half-dead from Order shifts or whatever disposable, menial labour Remus had been able to pick up, dozing against one another on the couch, talking or drinking or touching, inoculation against the rising darkness outside their flat. He and Sirius have survived so many midnights together. 

 

Carefully, he sits on the edge of the bed, level with the concave inwards curve of Sirius’ waist, slowly (gently, holding his breath) reaches out one hand to Sirius’ shoulder. His eyes snap open instantly, long fingers springing to grip Remus’ wrist, tight and painful. Remus winces, brings his own free hand up to prise himself free.

 

“You were dreaming” he whispers. Sirius’ eyes are very wide in the darkness. He closes them, briefly.

 

“Yeah”

 

No explanation is forthcoming, or, Remus suspects, deserved. 

 

“I was, too”.

 

They sit in silence like that, Remus’ hand resting on top of where Sirius still has his wrist, the grip loosening a little as he relaxes slightly. 

 

“Azkaban” Sirius offers, quietly. It’s the first time Remus has heard him say it aloud.

 

“Peter,” says Remus, “and Harry”

 

Sirius narrows his eyes a little. “You’ve had to grow up fast,” he whispers, “looking after the kid”

 

Remus exhales heavily through his nose. “When have I ever not had to grow up too fast, Sirius?” he asks. He doesn’t mean it to sound chiding, but it does anyway - his trademark defensiveness, his urge to lash out rather than be pitied, still so close to the surface. 

 

“I only meant -”

 

“I know”

 

“- you’re good with him”. Sirius releases Remus’ wrist, moving to slip his fingers out from under Remus’ cupped palm. Remus, unthinking, rubs them with his thumb, a consoling gesture, something wordless and instinctual. 

 

“I’m doing everything all wrong” Sirius continues, and he sounds so small and sad that Remus aches.

 

“I don’t think there’s a right way to do any of this” he attempts, not really knowing what Sirius wants to hear.

 

“The kid doesn’t like me”

 

“He just doesn’t know you, Sirius. And you don’t really talk to him, you never -” he trails off, not wanting to get into an argument, when he’s been so good about being careful with Sirius.

 

“I know” he says, “I’m sorry”. 

  
Remus pats the fingers he’s still holding, gives them a final squeeze before he stands up. As he leaves, he takes one look back at Sirius, still curled on his side in the moonlight. He’s rubbing the hand Remus was holding, absently, with the fingers of the other, his face set in a serious, confused mask.  _ Look at me _ , he thinks, the desire so desperate and familiar he almost can’t stand it,  _ please look at me again _ . But Sirius is already slipping away back into himself, and Remus closes the door, the click of the latch impossibly loud in the silent hallway.


	9. Nine

In the morning, Sirius finds Remus out by the old barn, ducked inside the doorway. He’s rolling a cigarette, and when he sees Sirius he hands it over, starts a new one for himself. Sirius looks like shit - Remus suspects they both do, after the night’s disrupted sleep - all pale and harried, something vampiric in his appearance. 

 

“I usually smoke in here, if Harry’s home - don’t like him seeing, you know” Remus says, annoyed by how apologetic his voice sounds, as if it’s somehow embarassing or square to admit this. He’ll always feel a little like the uncool boy trailing after Sirius and James, never quite as casual or charismatic as them, following them into things - detention, bar crawls, other people’s battles. Always waiting for Sirius to turn his attention his way, in many respects as much of a dog as Sirius himself is. 

 

Sirius just nods, weirdly attentive and cautious, the way he’s reacted to almost everything since his arrival. Silent. Remus almost wants Sirius to make fun of him, tease him about  _ something,  _ just show a hint of the person he recognises instead of the polite, nervous stranger who wrings his bony hands together as he comes to join Remus in the doorway of the clapped out old barn behind the house.

 

It isn’t big, as barns go, and it’s been little more than an enormous shed for as long as he can remember, a graveyard of long-abandoned items he’s never had the inclination - or the time -  to sort through and pack away. 

 

“I forgot that you have  _ outbuildings _ ” Sirius says.

 

“Oh, yeah. Lord of the manor, me” he replies, aiming for levity but feeling something anxious from the distant past echoing in his voice as he does so. Sirius opens his mouth as if to speak, and Remus finds himself holding his breath, willing him  _ say it, say it,  _ although what he expects  ‘it’ to be, he has no idea. They always feel on the verge of things lately, perched on some tense precipice between speaking and understanding. The memory of their midnight conversation - of Sirius’ fingers around his wrist, of his own hand closing over them - stirs something within him, impatient, eager for Sirius to break the strange, tentative atmosphere between them, push it into something else.

 

Before he can say anything, a loud clattering sounds from the kitchen, and the moment breaks. Remus spits his cigarette onto the dusty barn floor (with regret, as he’s only just _ started _ ) and scuffs it out with his heel. He jogs towards the house to see whatever mess Harry’s managed to make with his breakfast, already trying to remember where his spare school jumper is in case there’s been another incident with the milk. As he leaves Sirius behind, still saying nothing, mouth slightly open in indecision, he finds himself thinking:  _ this is how things are now. I don’t have time to wait for you anymore. _

 

***

 

After the school run, Sirius sits down opposite him at the cluttered dining table, where he’s attempting to transcribe some handwritten correspondence for one of his odd-job clients. 

 

“What can I do?” he asks, and when Remus looks up from the illegible scrawl, his face looks determined, a passable imitation of a confident 26 year old man.

 

“What?” Remus asks, confused, looking briefly back at his notes.

 

“Not with that. Like, round the house. There must be something I can help out with, while you’re doing that”. He’s so clearly making an effort that Remus wants to reach out, but the touching that was permitted in the early hours of the morning would seem shockingly inappropriate now, in the cold light of Remus’ kitchen. 

 

“You don’t have to do anything” he says, automatically, and Sirius huffs out an annoyed breath.

 

“I know I don’t  _ have _ to, but… I’ve been here ages. I want to help. You have enough to get on with, with work, and the kid, and you’re going to be… busy, next week, aren’t you?” It’s clearly costing Sirius to speak so many words together, and so Remus doesn’t ask him how he’s apparently still keeping track of the lunar cycle. 

 

“Oh, erm - you could always help out with the garden? Or with the laundry, God knows we make enough of it , somehow…” he offers, adding “you could always do it by hand, if your magic isn’t -”

 

“I’ll be fine, Remus, I’m not a fucking squib!” Sirius snaps, suddenly, and looks surprised at himself. Remus is first taken aback, and then inexplicably, inordinately happy at the outburst, the first truly  _ Sirius  _ thing he’s heard since he arrived.

 

“Sorry,” he says, “I guess I’m not really used to talking to grown-ups much, these days”. Sirius looks chastened, rather than put out, but he just nods and gets up, rather pointedly siding the breakfast pots with magic as he crosses to the sink to wash them. 

 

The next few days are strange. Sirius seems determined to help around the house, obediently folding the washing and cleaning pots, weeding the little garden behind the farmhouse, a mixture of magical and manual labour, long hours in the sun that help him lose some of that Azkaban pallor. Twice Remus catches him smiling at Harry, something that seems to take great effort, as if the muscles are unused to moving in that direction. One evening he comes home before Harry is in bed and turns into Padfoot, sending Harry squealing with delighted laughter (he’s always wanted a dog, something which Remus has always held out on, for what he worries are transparently obvious reasons). He holds still while Harry buries his small hands in the deep fur, making him giggle and squirm as he presses his cold, wet nose to Harry’s face and neck, barking his doggy laugh back when Harry wriggles away. Remus has to leave the room, stand in the kitchen - something in it so close to a lost, imagined future that he’s embarrassed to find himself on the verge of tears. 

 

He’s making himself busy with the washing up when Sirius trots in behind him, the click of his claws on the tiled floor suddenly disappearing as he transforms. Remus is simultaneously mortified and consoled to see that Sirius’ eyes are also wet, and when he says “He’s such a good kid, Remus”, his cracking voice is so disarmingly tender that Remus can only nod. 

 

For all the improvements, Sirius is still not well. Remus watches him, in the long moments when he stares off into space, hears the noises behind his door at night when he too is sleepless and alone. He hesitates outside, every time, but never goes inside. He wants to help Sirius, so much that it aches and aches within him. What stops him is always the same: he can tell that the way he wants to help Sirius is not entirely friendly, is not simply the concern of an old friend or even of a former partner. He can acknowledge, now,  that it’s the current and living pain of love, and as such isn’t his place to offer.

 

A few days before the moon, a week or so into Sirius’ more active participation in their home, they’d been sitting on the sofa, Harry on the floor in front of them colouring something in, his tongue stuck between his lips in concentration. 

 

“I’ve been thinking,” Sirius had said, quietly, “about going to see a Healer. You know, about sleeping”. Remus, trying to ignore the warm blooming of feeling, the affection and pride he felt for Sirius, for how hard he was trying, had offered, instantly “I’ll come with you. You don’t need to do it alone, those places are scary”. He’d been thinking of his own assessments at St Mungo’s after Harry came to live with him, the therapy sessions and potions, the long spells of trial and error, being stared at from behind a clipboard and asked to spill all of his darkest secrets to a stranger. 

 

“Oh,” Sirius had said, seemingly taken aback by the suggestion, “no thanks, mate. Kind of you, though”.

 

_ Kind of him _ . He’d taken it for what it was - a polite distancing, a tactful brush-off reminding Remus that whatever he was to Sirius, it was not someone who owed him (who could _ want  _ to owe him) that. A lover could have offered comfort, could have volunteered to crawl alongside Sirius in the sleepless night, provided the complicated, uncomplicated comfort of his presence. Someone needed to help Sirius, but Remus knew - had been reminded - that it could not be him: not without reopening old wounds, without exposing himself, revealing his unasked for and unwanted affection for what it was, his desperation to help as stark a declaration as words could ever have been.

 

Instead, he meanders around the twilight farmhouse and busies himself batch-cooking dinners for the week ahead, burying himself in the sorts of tasks he’d come to rely upon for distraction living here alone with Harry. He keeps his hands busy because they want to reach for Sirius, and his mouth busy because it wants to kiss Sirius. He fills his time with productive nothings, and turns on the wireless to fill their silences. 

 

He doesn’t know, now, how his younger self could ever have been brave enough to kiss Sirius, to love him. How he’d ever managed to close that gap for the first time, the threat of rejection as likely as the promise of peace. He knows it makes him a coward, to be so afraid of the burning embarrassment of Sirius’ careful pity that he can’t ask for the only thing he’s ever truly allowed himself to want, but still: it can not be him. 

 

He wonders, sometimes, how he could ever have dared to think himself worth loving then, let alone now, with everything he’s done to Sirius in the intervening years lying between them. How he’d ever imagined Sirius could reciprocate, even knowing in retrospect that back then he somehow, miraculously, had done so.

 

***

 

The day of the May moon arrives, and Remus waves Harry off at the schoolgates as usual, thanking Arthur as he hands over the little overnight bag he packs each month. When he gets home, Sirius is flicking through the morning paper, eating half a slice of dry toast and absently flicking the crumbs from his long fingers onto the wooden tabletop. 

 

“Where do you go?” he asks, casually.

 

“Hmm?”

 

“For the moon. I was just reading about the cells at the Ministry, they sound horrible. You don’t…?”

 

“Oh, that. No - there’s a secure site near Cardiff that this nonprofit runs, they still log your attendance but it’s a bit less… grim, than the ones in London”.

 

“Ah. Far cry from the shack, though, isn’t it?”

 

Remus is surprised. Sirius rarely mentions their shared past - it’s terrain best left untrodden, both the good bits and the bad. 

 

“Probably safer, on balance” he says, neutrally.

 

“Mmm. Arthur and Molly have Harry?”

 

“Yeah”

 

Remus wonders if Sirius is offended or relieved that leaving Harry alone with him didn’t even cross his mind. He doesn’t ask. They pass the day much as they have all the days before it - crossing at odd intervals, Remus trying to get on with his work despite the moon pulling at his muscles, aching angrily in anticipation of the change, Sirius stalking about the house reading scattered sections of books pulled seemingly at random from the shelves, pottering about in the garden, repainting Remus’ sun-bleached planters. 

 

By the time Remus heads off, Sirius is out on four legs, over the hill. Already out of sight.


	10. Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sirius POV - and the first chapter that earns the E rating. If you want to avoid that, you'll know when it's coming.

Sirius wanders the empty house, self-consciously straightening cushions and tablecloths as he passes them, smoothing out the evidence of his presence. This house at once soothes and unseats him: feels so safe, full of Remus and Harry, so far from Azkaban’s cold stone, that he’d stay forever. It also knocks him off-balance, every part of every room testament to how different Remus is to the man he remembers - to how little he, Sirius, is needed.

When they were younger, Remus had always been nervous, noncommittal to the point of flakiness: there had been something weirdly sexy about his prickly awkwardness, the stubbornness of refusing to assert himself against Sirius and James’ louder voices when he easily could have done. He’d been avoidant and guarded and maddening and perfect, a tangled knot Sirius had wanted, burningly, to unravel for himself. Even in bed, it had always felt more like being allowed to fuck Remus than it had being submitted to: always something wary and closed-off in him that Sirius, desperately, wanted to reach inside him and break. 

Now, he has a grounded, purposeful air that makes Sirius feel out of place, as if he’s been trapped in amber as Remus has evolved, surpassed him: the confidence with which he speaks, the small, everyday competence that Sirius finds shaming in comparison. The neat patches on his clothing, the marked-up hallway calendar, even the spare loo rolls in the cupboard, feel so sensible, so tangibly adult, that Sirius can’t recognise Remus in them. In the seventies he’d been careful, yes, but only by comparison to the others, not overly fastidious or responsible - Sirius recalls every stupid power outage and pub crawl, every shared faded t shirt and inadvisable substance with an aching fondness, mourning the four years in which Remus has, by necessity, become the grown man against whom Sirius now comes up short. 

Do you ever laugh? Sirius wants to ask him sometimes, when Harry’s in bed and it’s just the pair of them, quiet in the sitting room. If Remus laughed, Sirius is sure he’d be able to relearn it, too - like a language that needs a second speaker. Do you remember when we… he often thinks to begin, ready to open his mouth against the ticking silence in the room, but inevitably whatever memory he dredges up makes him feel ridiculous, childish, and so instead he goes back to whatever household task Remus has allocated to keep him busy, biting his tongue against the weight of his undeserving love, and the inadequacy that comes with it. 

There had been a time when he’d had something to offer, his looks and his charm, when he’d been popular and smiling and wanted, clever and burning with promise. It made sense that Remus had wanted him then, but now? What could he possibly have to give that Remus, handsome and adult and capable, could want? Sirius resigns himself to pity - to friendship, for which he’s deeply grateful, even if it can’t be anything else.

 

Now he eyes the kitchen clock - clearly a gift from Molly - and the little hand that tells him Remus is heading home. He swallows the clawing anxiety in his gut, focuses on folding the remaining laundry - Remus’ unlovely, plain shirts and Harry’s colourful little outfits, smoothing away at them carefully, as if the roughness of his tattooed fingers could stain their bright domesticity if he pressed too hard.

***  
The little bell in Remus’ hallway rings - it’s impressive spellwork, charming something to sense the collection of magical energy on the property line as an early warning of apparition, and Sirius is quietly proud of Remus for it, his aptitude for defensive magic and the way he’s turned the full force of that skill towards the goal of keeping Harry safe. From his position in the sitting room, Sirius can see the moment Remus materialises just outside the low gate, looking pale and drawn, limping his way across the yard to the house. 

He’s holding one hand protectively over his ribs and his jaw is set in a look of grim determination. Sirius has seen that face a thousand times, Remus and his stubbornness about pain, his unwillingness to show weakness even - and perhaps especially - in front of Sirius. He feels sick, remembering when Remus’ vulnerability was something he was allowed, before he fucked it up, became someone undeserving of trust. He’s had a lot of time to think about this, over the years, and it always comes back to: if I had been trustworthy, nobody would have died. Sometimes he feels like he may as well have killed them himself, for all that he enabled it.

Swallowing his guilt, which is never far from brimming over, he opens the front door to let Remus in, unable to watch his slow, lurching march any longer from the window. He sways a little in the doorway and Sirius grabs his shoulder, automatically - they’ve touched so little since he got out that his stomach swoops with nerves at the contact, familiar and unfamiliar at once. Steering Remus onto the low couch, he takes him in: face washed out with pain, eyes dark and tired, bruising speckling his arms and legs from whatever restraints are used in the transformation facility. When Remus moves the hand cupping his torso, Sirius sees a small, damp patch of blood blooming out from beneath the thin cotton of his t shirt. 

“Hang on” he says, ignoring Remus’ quiet “Sirius,” as he fetches the first aid kit from the kitchen, draws a small bowl of water and sets both on the small coffee table by his side. When he reaches for the edge of Remus’ t shirt, holding his breath, Remus protests, but weakly, tired and drawn.

“Just let me” Sirius says, and hates how desperate his voice sounds, the way it catches in his throat and comes out rougher than he intended. This he can do, this he has done a hundred times before. Even he isn’t so diminished that he can’t take care of Remus, if he’s needed. He never imagined he’d be needed again. 

Gently he peels back the fabric, Remus wincing when it pulls away from the shallow gash beneath his pectoral.

“Thought they kept you safe, in that place?” 

“They do - I, this is nowhere near as bad as it used to be. I just wrenched it a bit towards the end, I think” 

“What did you do before I was here?” Sirius asks, gently dabbing at the wound with a wet cloth, not daring to look up from his immediate area of focus into those tired eyes.

“I made do” Remus’ voice is soft, a note of sadness in it Sirius can’t fully parse. He fixes a little gauze dressing over the site - it’ll be healed in a day or so, werewolf healing times being what they are - and moves to tug Remus’ shirt back down over his scarred belly. Remus slides one hand - the nails jagged and rimmed with something dark - down to catch his, and when Sirius slides his eyes up to meet Remus’, there’s something indefinable there. They sit in silence for a moment - longer than is comfortable - their hands resting together on the warm flesh of Remus’ abdomen. Sirius can feel Remus’ breathing beneath his palm, wants so desperately to show that he can do something for him, can be something to him - wants even more desperately to believe it himself. 

Ignoring the anxious swirling in his stomach, the screaming worry and hesitation that will inevitably return, Sirius makes a decision. He brings his other, unoccupied hand up, thumb dipping just below the waistband of Remus’ jeans - feeling his sharp intake of breath as much as hearing it. He starts to whisper, the sibilant first syllable of Sirius’ name, but Sirius cuts him off, forcing himself to keep looking into Remus’ eyes even though his heart is hammering and he wants to cast them down, to communicate in a less painful way.

“Let me” he says again, “just let me…” and Remus hesitates for a moment and then nods, breathing shakily, pulling his hand gently from Sirius’ to run nervously through his own tawny hair. Sirius pops the button and pulls down Remus’ zip, anxiety and arousal combining to make some new, nauseating emotion that fizzes in his gut as he slides Remus’ jeans down his calves and kneels between his legs, lowering his face to brush against Remus’ hardening cock where it rests in the grey cotton of his boxers. Remus breathes out, heavily, through his nose, and Sirius steels himself - he’s really doing this, it’s happening - and pulls the waistband out, and down, sliding Remus’ underwear to meet his jeans, cock lying hard against his belly before Sirius lowers his lips to it and licks along the length before taking the tip into his mouth. 

It’s been years since he’s done this, but it’s not exactly hard to remember what to do, and he brings his other hand up to massage the base, spreading the wetness of saliva and precome down with his palm until everything’s wet and sliding easily, making awkward, stupidly hot noises as Sirius moves his hand and head. He feels his cheeks burning with arousal and embarrassment, and when Remus moans it sends a tingle through Sirius’ spine. He wants to always be making Remus make that exact sound, to be capable of giving him this. He thinks about everything he wants to convey - how much he wants to be needed, to be useful, how much he loved Remus then, how much he loves him now, his fear and his hope, the enormity of his desire, blinding and terrifying.

Remus is twitching his hips up now, losing his tightly wound self control, self consciously running his hand over his bandaged rib. Sirius feels Remus’ fingertips tapping his own, where his hand rests on Remus’ thigh, feels him lace their fingers together, something about that touch more disarming than any of the rest. Sirius redoubles his efforts, moving with more enthusiasm than technique, and before long Remus is tapping his shoulder in warning. When Sirius doesn’t pull off, Remus whispers, “Sirius, I’m…”, but Sirius just squeezes his fingers in acknowledgment and carries on, feeling a weak, warm pride when Remus comes in his mouth moments later, runs his fingers through Sirius’ hair immediately, as if he was afraid to do so before. Silently, Sirius helps Remus slide his jeans and pants back up, feeling suddenly awkward, unsure what to say. He can’t bring himself to look up into Remus’ face, scared of whatever he’ll see there. Immediately, panic is rising within him, brain screaming, cursing his own lack of self control, his maddening wanting.

“Sirius” Remus says, his voice hoarse, but Sirius turns his back, mumbles “I’m just - I’m just gonna…” lamely as he heads to the back door. He has the dog on before he even reaches the open field.


	11. Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, narratively, this is sort of the last chapter - chapter twelve is literally just sex. So if you don't want to read explicit stuff, you can just stop with this one.

Things go back to normal quickly - so normal, in fact, that Remus finds himself wondering if it even happened at all. Sirius isn’t avoiding him, exactly, but he’s back to the polite, cheery distance of a few weeks ago - diligently taking care of household chores, playing with Harry, occasionally throwing out outrageously incorrect suggestions for the _Prophet_ ’s crossword clues from his perch in the armchair.

 

He keeps disappearing, too - it’s like those first weeks, when he’d put on the dog and roam the nearby countryside, except now Remus can hear him clattering about in the yard, or the outbuildings, doing god knows what while Remus is stuck inside focusing on external marking, trying not to go out of his mind wondering _what the hell_ happened the other day. Was Sirius just bored? Did the situation just feel so familiar that something pitying and nostalgic was stirred up within him? Does he regret the whole thing? It’s at the back of his mind when he’s making dinner or washing up, when Sirius smiles, soft and inscrutable, over at him when he’s sitting on the floor with Harry.

 

When Sirius heads off to an appointment, sounding vaguely embarrassed about the whole thing, Remus wonders if he’s talking to his therapist about it, and if so, whether it’s as a positive development or a dangerous backslide, and then worries about the arrogance of wondering if Sirius would waste his precious, expensive hour per week on him at all. It’s clear he’s pulling away - gone longer each day - and Remus wonders if he might want to move out soon. The idea hurts, although Remus knows that’s selfish, that Sirius feeling able to start really living his life would be a good thing, that he was always going to leave eventually. He resolves to make the most of the time he has, and tries to really savour it - every evening that Sirius comes in from the farmstead with splinters in his fingers and his skin browning from the early July sun, joins him and Harry for dinner, every time Sirius rolls up his sleeves and helps out with Harry’s bath, turning into Padfoot and shaking himself joyfully free of the bathwater Harry’s splashed on him.

 

He tries to memorise everything, the aristocratic tilt of Sirius’ face in profile as he reads in the armchair, how the smooth haughtiness cracks, the first whispers of crows’ feet crinkling by his eyes when he starts sniggering at a dirty bit, reading the offending passage out to Remus, as ebullient and silly as when he reads to Harry in the evening. Always Remus finds himself thinking, whispering over and over in his own head like a mantra, the thing he feels like he has always been asking of Sirius, always will be: _look at me, look at me, look at me._

 

***

 

One morning in mid-July, Sirius comes into the kitchen looking nervous in a way he hasn’t seemed in weeks.

 

“Everything all right?” Remus asks, immediately worried.

 

“Yeah, yeah, never better” he says, casually, carefully dismissive, “look, are you about ready to take a break, there?”

 

“I suppose I could - are you _sure_ everything’s…”

 

“Everything’s fine!” Sirius cuts him off, manic and clipped, and Remus furrows his brow in suspicious concern, rolls himself - and automatically, Sirius - a cigarette, heading out to the garden behind Sirius.

 

“We don’t need to walk over to the barn - Harry’s at Molly’s today” Remus says, when Sirius doesn’t stop walking.

 

“I want to show you something, actually” Sirius says, sounding nervous again, and Remus feels a little chill of anxiety twisting in his stomach.

 

“What”

 

“Just… it’s easier to just show you, come on”

 

They make their way to the barn, Sirius nervous and impatient, Remus apprehensive. When they get there, Sirius gestures to the front door anxiously, saying “It’s ok if you don’t like it, I just thought…”

 

For a long moment Remus can’t speak. The wooden doors of the barn are now twice as thick, and when Remus looks closely he can see little carvings - similar to the ones on the doors and ceiling beams in the house. When he swings the heavy door open, it’s clear that they’re on the inside, too, hundreds of little symbols and wards - for protection, guarding, for locking. Each one is shiny with silver, melted and brushed on like paint - he almost reaches to touch them before catching himself and pulling back his cautious hand.

 

He looks at Sirius, hand still dangling in mid-air. He looks like he’s going to be sick, as if he’s presenting Remus with a dead body instead of this - this incredible gift, this thing Remus has never got around to giving himself. “Is this…” he begins to ask, finds horrifyingly that his voice is thick, and swallows the rest of the sentence.

 

“It’s for you, erm - it locks from the outside now, see?” Sirius knocks against the thick, silvery beams on the outer door with his fist, pulling one of them down and demonstrating first a physical bolt and then a complicated little warding gesture with his wand. “Don’t say anything yet, just come and…” he continues, walking inside and looking back at Remus, as if afraid he won’t follow.

 

All of the junk that littered the barn floor has been cleared away, leaving a wide, open space. On one timber wall there’s a set of chains and bolts, the same as the facility in Cardiff - but these are padded with soft-looking leather. “They unlock with a wandless spell, so you can get out once you’re...you know, back” Sirius says, his speech clipped and carefully neutral. “And there’s a mattress thingy here - look, it flips down, so you don’t chew it to bits in the night - in case you don’t want to go back in straight away”.

 

Remus takes it all in, feeling light-headed and overwhelmed. He’s about two seconds away from tears, he knows it, his throat feeling full and his eyes pricking. He manages to say “Sirius, why…” before he has to stop again.

 

Sirius frowns before he says “Because you hate handing Harry over once a month, I know you do. And you’re in a right state sometimes the morning after, you don’t need to be traipsing across Wales with a hole in your stomach -”

 

“It wasn’t a _hole in my stomach_ ”

 

“- with an injury then, oh my god. Especially when - if I’m not - you just don’t need it, and honestly, I don’t know why you didn’t have this already, you just had all this _shit_ in here, and I - “ Sirius is babbling nervously. Remus knows the feeling.

 

“No, Sirius, I mean, why did _you_ do this? You did this for me, this amazing thing. I just…”

 

“Don’t say you won’t accept it. It’s your fucking barn, you have to keep it now. I’m sorry if it’s...inappropriate, or something. Like I said, you don’t have to keep me here, I can go, I just. I wanted you to have it” he finishes, his voice small, looking down at his feet, dark eyelashes obscuring his eyes.

 

Oh. Remus feels a dangerous welling of hope, a surging lightness in his chest. It doesn’t seem possible that Sirius can want to give him this beautiful thing, can want him at all - could possibly think that Remus would tell him to leave.

 

“I don’t want you to go, Sirius” he says, very gently, reaching out to grip Sirius’ clasped hands. When he looks up, his eyes are devastating, the dark slate of the sea on a cloudy day.

 

“You don’t want me to go” he whispers, like he doesn’t believe it, “and you...like it? It’s not weird?”

 

“It’s the most… massive, mad thing anyone has ever done for me, Sirius. Of course I like it - it’s, it’s maybe weird, but I love it” he says, realising for the first time that for all his own uncertainty, his own careful suppression of his feelings, Sirius too is uncertain. It makes him dizzy, and also angry at himself - for assuming that Sirius now would be like Sirius then, open to the point of indiscretion, taking the things he wanted instead of waiting to be offered them. He reaches one gentle hand out to Sirius, cups his cheek, feels the bones shift as Sirius begins, tentatively, to smile.

 

“You like it,” he says, smile getting into his voice, “and you don’t want me to go.”

 

“I don’t want you to go” Remus whispers, and kisses him.

 

 

Here is the beautiful art that inspired this work - Harry curled up by the door waiting for Remus. For me, this is the barn, and Harry at some future date waiting for Remus to come out in the morning <3

 


	12. Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said last chapter - this is the long awaited sex. If you're not into that, you're not going to miss any plot by skipping this. Thank you so much for sticking with me!

Once they start kissing, the idea of stopping seems impossible. Sirius’ lips are soft against Remus’, and they part for him, soft at first and then urgent, his tongue hot and insistent against the line of Remus’ teeth. Every second they spent, these last few months, doing anything else was such a _waste_ , Remus thinks dumbly, as Sirius slides his hands tentatively inside Remus’ t shirt, resting on the jut of his hips like he’s waiting for an invitation.

 

He’s rubbing distracting little circles with his thumbs, and Remus leans into the touch, skimming his own hands up over the ridges of Sirius’ ribs. _I will never let you get this skinny again_ , he thinks, madly, almost giggling at the incongruity of such a protective, unsexy thought, before Sirius effectively silences that particular voice by growling low in his throat and biting down on Remus’ lower lip. He walks Remus backwards until his knees hit the little bed, thankfully still flipped down from Sirius’ earlier demonstration. He cups his hand around the back of Sirius’ neck and brings him down with him, Sirius bracing his hands on Remus’ shoulders as he moves to straddle his waist.

 

“Just… just wait!” Sirius half-laughs down into Remus’ mouth, “if you don’t stop kissing me, I’m never going to get your shirt off”. Remus smiles and kisses him a moment longer - it really is very difficult to stop - before he releases Sirius, reluctantly, pulling his own t shirt up and over his head as Sirius quickly steps up off the bed for a moment and strips, efficient and effortless, sexy in its own unaffected way. He purses his lips and looks down at his own body - the dip of his ribs and hips, the dark splotches of tattoos, and he seems about to say something self-effacing and apologetic, so Remus fans his hand out, gripping Sirius by the hip and pulling him closer.

 

“You’re so beautiful” he whispers into the warm skin of Sirius’ belly, nipping the pale skin with his teeth. His shoulder brushes Sirius cock and he moves his mouth across the plane of his stomach and he feels Sirius press into the touch, gasping. Long fingers gently wind through Remus’ hair, not gripping but just resting there. It feels safe, and right, and Remus ducks his head to take the tip of Sirius’ cock into his mouth, remembering every time they did this in the past: exploratory and uncertain, practiced and affectionate, hard and angry. The moment feels both heavy with the past and impossibly light with the futures they can build together. He lets himself savour it for a second - the hitching of Sirius’ breath, the tension in his stomach as he tries not to push forward, the shape and weight of him, every part of him beloved and familiar and new and different at once.

 

With some regret, Remus pulls off, wiggling his hips as he tries to pull off his pants and jeans. It’s hard from this position, sitting down with Sirius still standing between his legs, and Sirius scrambles to help, both of them laughing slightly as Sirius tugs and Remus kicks. Finally they’re both naked in the barn, nervous giggling dying away as Remus leans back, shuffling more fully onto the bed, Sirius kneeling over him with one leg between Remus’ parted thighs. He kisses over Remus’ neck, letting his teeth graze over the sensitive skin there, making him shiver and push his hips up against Sirius’ abdomen. He feels Sirius smiling against his clavicle.

 

Sirius whispers something, and the hand by Remus’ hip is suddenly wet - a tiny blob drips coldly onto Remus’ bare skin, making him jump minutely.

 

“Oh, you remember that one on the first go, do you?” he whispers teasingly, and Sirius rubs his hand down over Remus’ erect cock, grinning wolfishly as he says “What makes you think that’s the first go?”.

 

Remus doesn’t have time to respond - to think properly about Sirius on his own in the spare room, thinking about this (although that’s definitely one to save for later) - because Sirius is asking, very seriously “Is this okay? Can I…?”, rubbing his fingers down over Remus’ balls and behind, circling his rim, not applying any pressure, just massaging.

 

“Yeah,” he breathes, because for all that it’s been four years without this, without Sirius, suddenly waiting even a minute longer seems impossible, “yeah, fuck, Sirius…”.

 

Sirius grins and pushes one finger in, careful and slow, letting Remus bear down before he moves any further in. Remus is vaguely embarrassed by the breathy little noises he’s making, high in his chest, pushing down onto Sirius. The second finger is more of a stretch, and Sirius is being so slow, so thorough, looking down with dark eyes at the place he and Remus meet, watching his tattoos disappear and reappear as he moves his hand. The third hurts a little, but not in a bad way, the aching stretch echoing the tense coiling in Remus’ stomach, and when Sirius fans out his fingers Remus yells, something inside of him sparking with pleasure. Sirius has a look of deep concentration, angling his fingers towards it, a targeting, massaging thrusting that has Remus arching his back, letting his head drop backwards, exposing his throat to the cool air of the barn. It’s been so long since Remus fucked anyone who actually cared about him enough to take this much time over prep, and Sirius is fingering him like there’s nothing coming afterwards, like making Remus feel good is the goal in itself.

 

“Come on, Sirius” he gasps out, and Sirius smiles, weirdly gentle, as he slides his fingers free gently, leaving Remus feeling uncomfortable and empty. He watches as Sirius slides his hand over himself, coating his straining cock with lube, before he leans back over Remus, lining himself up with one hand as he pushes in, an agonisingly slow slide, his arms shaking on either side of Remus’ shoulders until he comes to a stop, breathing raggedly into Remus’ ear.

 

Remus tilts his head to the side and kisses the side of Sirius’ face, his nose, his mouth, pushing up onto Sirius’ cock with his own hips, urging him to move. Sirius exhales heavily and starts to move, slow but deep, pulling out almost all the way before slamming his hips forward. It feels amazing, both to be doing this and to be doing it with Sirius specifically, to have Sirius Black here, and whole, and inside his body. Remus is leaning back on one elbow, one hand in Sirius’ hair, and when he moves it down between their bodies to touch himself Sirius bats it away, replaces it with his own.

 

The combined sensations - Sirius’ hand moving in time with his hips, surrounding Remus, covering him - are overwhelming, and Remus whispers, between heavy, gasping breaths “Sirius, I’m really close, I’m going to…” Sirius growls and starts snapping his hips forward faster, harder, clearly having been holding back, trying to last for him.

 

His lower back is sweaty under Remus’ palm and when he leans in and bites down on Remus’ earlobe, Remus finds himself coming, his cock pulsing wetly between their stomachs, hips bucking up a little. Sirius follows not long after, resting his head heavily on Remus’ shoulder, carefully pulling out with a little wince. They lie side by side on the narrow bed, Sirius’ grey eyes soft and his lips very red in the sunlight streaming in through the slatted wooden wall.

 

Remus can’t stop kissing him, can’t stop thinking of things he wants to say, or to do - “Don’t go” he finds himself whispering, can see how big and stupid his smile is in the answering one on Sirius’ face when he whispers back, so soft it’s barely audible over the birdsong in the garden, “I won’t”.


End file.
